'Nobody knows what they're doing': Dan Levy on living with insecurity and self-doubt

With the smashing success of Schitt's Creek, you would never think Dan Levy could be insecure. But when it came to making his debut feature film, Good Grief, he says he had to override his natural impulse to tell himself he was out of his league.

"It was a wild process of making this movie," Levy tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "Somehow we came out the other end, and I feel proud of it, even though I think it was probably the most cruel I've ever been to myself….

"It's tough if you're not someone who is unbelievably confident because you're just looking for someone to validate your own fears about yourself."

Ever since he first started making TV, Levy says he feared venturing into film. The most terrifying part was writing the screenplay.

"It was the totality of telling a story over — in this case — 97 minutes," he explains. "I didn't know how to do it. I had become so comfortable telling a story in 21 pages, not 100. So for a while I had kind of cast away the idea that I would ever make a film, and then somehow the idea for the screenplay came and I, again, overrode my own fears to say, 'OK, let's try this. At the very least, let's try it.'"

Save the Cat

So how does a multi-hyphenate Emmy Award-winning showrunner, writer, actor, director and producer overcome his self-doubt to write a screenplay he can be proud of? He does what anyone would do: buy a step-by-step guide. 

"I bought Save the Cat," he says. "Save the Cat, funnily enough, was a huge tool for me."

Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need is a bestselling screenwriting book by showbiz veteran Blake Snyder. "I recommend that book to everybody," says Levy.

"It walks you through the process of how to write a screenplay. It breaks down every element of what you need to do to come out of the experience with a screenplay. And so I was bookmarking, going through the pages, making notes, doing all of that, trying to figure out how it works. Because writing TV is structurally very different than a film."

With the experience of making his first feature film now behind him, Levy has come to a realization about his feelings of insecurity. 

"Nobody knows what they're doing," he says. "Nobody. It's all a fluke.… Everyone is going through the same kind of experience and everyone has doubts about themselves and everyone has fears about their own capabilities and fears that maybe this is it and I'll never find another idea. I think there's this amazing thing about acknowledging the fact that you don't know what you're doing and all you can do is try."

The full interview with Dan Levy is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Dan Levy produced by Kaitlyn Swan.