Macaulay Culkin spent more than three decades being recognized as Catherine O’Hara’s movie son. At the 2026 Emmy Awards, he made clear that the connection had lasted far beyond Home Alone.
Culkin joined Annie Murphy and Dan Levy onstage at the Peacock Theater on September 14 to honor O’Hara before the ceremony’s In Memoriam presentation. After describing her as encouraging, warm and funny, he settled on a more personal word: “Mama.”
“She was my mom. She was our mama,” Culkin said, standing beside two of O’Hara’s Schitt’s Creek children, according to Entertainment Weekly.
O’Hara died on January 30 at 71. Culkin had already said goodbye publicly that day with an Instagram message beginning, “Mama. I thought we had time,” but the Emmys brought him together with Murphy and Levy to remember the woman whose two most famous maternal roles connected generations of viewers.
Culkin Said O’Hara ‘Always Showed Up’ for Him
Catherine O’Hara is honored by Macaulay Culkin, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy in an emotional tribute at the #Emmys: “She was our mama.”
(via NBC/EMMYS) pic.twitter.com/jeTsKMAG1n
— Variety (@Variety) September 15, 2026
Culkin began by acknowledging the joke that has followed O’Hara since 1990. Audiences remember Kate McCallister as the mother who accidentally left Kevin behind, but Culkin said the woman who played her was someone he could depend on long after their two Home Alone movies ended.
“Like a good mom, she always showed up when I asked her to,” Culkin told the audience. He then turned the premise of the movies into his farewell, saying that although O’Hara had forgotten him twice onscreen, the people who loved her would continue remembering her.
Their relationship remained visible decades after Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. When Culkin received his Hollywood Walk of Fame star in December 2023, O’Hara was one of the people he invited to speak, and he wiped away tears as she praised the child actor she had first worked with more than 30 years earlier.
Culkin also used his Emmy remarks to widen the idea of O’Hara as a mother beyond the screen. He mentioned her husband, Bo Welch, and their sons Matthew and Luke before calling her “our mama” and urging the audience to call their own mothers that night.
Murphy and Levy Remembered Their ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Mom
Annie Murphy followed Culkin with memories of O’Hara’s unmistakable laugh and the reactions she has encountered from strangers since her death. Murphy recalled people approaching her in everyday places, including on an Air Canada flight and at a gas station, simply to tell her how much O’Hara had meant to them.
Murphy played Alexis Rose for all six seasons of Schitt’s Creek, while Levy played her brother David and co-created the series with his father, Eugene Levy. O’Hara played their mother, Moira Rose, turning the extravagant former soap star into one of the defining comedy characters of her later career.
Levy focused on what creating that character with O’Hara was actually like. His biggest lesson, he said, was to trust her instincts, whether she arrived with late script notes, an unexpected costume idea, another variation on Moira’s accent or a new plan involving the character’s enormous collection of wigs.
He credited O’Hara’s willingness to experiment with helping shape Moira rather than simply performing what had already been written. Levy also remembered the friendship outside work, including her dinners, stories, generosity and advice, calling the time spent around her something he would hold onto.
The Tribute Led Into the Emmys In Memoriam
Culkin, Murphy and Levy’s remarks led directly into the ceremony’s remembrance of television figures who died during the previous year. Noah Kahan performed “Bridge Over Troubled Water” during the In Memoriam presentation.
O’Hara had received 10 Emmy nominations during her career and won twice, according to the Television Academy. Her first win came in 1982 for writing on SCTV Network, where she built many of the characters and comic instincts that established her career.
Nearly four decades later, Moira Rose brought her a second Emmy, this time for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2020. That victory came during Schitt’s Creek‘s historic final season sweep of the major comedy categories.
Her final years also produced two more Emmy nominations in 2025. She was nominated for playing Patty Leigh in The Studio and for her guest role as Gail in The Last of Us, adding two dramatically different performances to a television career that stretched from sketch comedy to prestige drama.
Three Years Earlier, O’Hara Had Been the One Honoring Culkin
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At Culkin’s 2023 Walk of Fame ceremony, the roles were reversed. O’Hara stood at the microphone and talked about the 10-year-old actor she had watched become one of the biggest child stars in the world after Home Alone.
She credited Culkin’s sense of humor with helping him survive the extraordinary attention that followed the movie and with making Kevin McCallister a character families continued returning to decades later. O’Hara closed by joking that she was his “fake mom” who had left him home alone twice, then told him she was proud of him.
Culkin wiped away tears before the two embraced. After O’Hara’s death in January, he posted photographs from both eras of their relationship, pairing an image from Home Alone with one from that Walk of Fame reunion.
“I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote then. At the Emmys eight months later, he stood beside O’Hara’s other onscreen children and supplied the simpler description that had stayed with him: “She was my mom.”