Will “Big Mistakes” do for Taylor Ortega what “Schitt’s Creek” did for Annie Murphy? Dan Levy thinks so

Nick RomanoThu, April 9, 2026 at 6:23 PM UTC

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Dan Levy as Nicky, Taylor Ortega as Morgan on 'Big Mistakes'Credit: Spencer Pazer/NetflixKey Points -

Dan Levy can't wait to put his Big Mistakes costar Taylor Ortega "in front of a large audience on Netflix."

Ortega talks about her early years chasing comedy in New York and getting a shoutout from Dwayne Johnson for her Elite Daily blogging.

On the character of Morgan, Ortega says, "It seemed like a past version of me in a way."

For Dan Levy, finding his onscreen sister for one of his TV shows is intuitive. He doesn’t really know until he knows. With Annie Murphy, the future Schitt’s Creek star came into her Alexis Rose audition with a “casual nonchalance” that prompted Levy to call his dad, costar, and series co-creator, Eugene Levy, to cement the casting.

Several years later, on his second big TV series, Big Mistakes, he had a similar feeling with Taylor Ortega and the role of Morgan.

“It was about finding an actor who was able to show that roughness, show the acidity, show the humor, and the dark side of Morgan's humor,” Levy tells Entertainment Weekly. “She has this very funny, dark sense of humor, but when we need her, [she’ll] show up emotionally. Taylor has this inherent.”

More so than the already established Canadian comics Eugene Levy and the late Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek launched Dan Levy and Murphy into the stratosphere of pop culture relevance. The TV creator feels the same is about to happen for Ortega, now that Big Mistakes is streaming on Netflix.

The show stars Levy and Ortega as Nicky and Morgan, the older children of Laurie Metcalf's Linda, a raucous New Jersey mother running for mayor. It's about their noisy, nosy, dysfunctional family, which includes younger sibling Natalie (Abby Quinn), and the events that haphazardly forced the brother-sister duo serve at the whims of a local criminal organization.

Dan Levy and Taylor Ortega on 'Big Mistakes'Credit: Netflix

“She’ been working for a long time," Levy says, referring to Ortega's roles on the live-action Kim Possible TV movie, series Ghosts and Flatch, a bit part in one episode of Succession, and a smaller but standout part on Another Simple Favor. "But to have the opportunity to put her in front of a large audience on Netflix, that's a joy for me because I think she's a star and I can't wait for audiences to watch her and love her in the way that I do."

Sitting at Netflix HQ in New York City on a sunny Monday afternoon in late March, Ortega tries to process what Levy is talking about. "I have thought about it, but I guess there's so many elements that contribute to the success of a project," she says. "So much of it is out of our hands, and even out of Dan's hands, that all you can do is make what you think is the best possible show."

So much of Big Mistakes feels tailor-made to Ortega. The 36-year-old has lived in Los Angeles for four years but calls the East Coast home. She grew up in New Jersey, in a similar small town to the one depicted on the show, and not too far from where the team filmed Big Mistakes. ("It was almost like they sensed when I re-entered the time zone," Ortega jokes of her family.) The relationship between Morgan and Linda felt reminiscent of her dynamic with her own mother, whom she says visited the set and had a difficult timing separating the material from her daughter.

"Even the character breakdown really sounded like me," Ortega says. "It seemed like a past version of me in a way."

Morgan worked as a public school teacher in New York City, but was forced to return home and move back in with her mother — something she's still wrapping her head around at the start of the series. Morgan now teaches at a local school and is in a relationship with her simple-minded, goofy boyfriend-turned-fiancé Max (Jack Innanen), who's way more invested in their love than she is.

Nicky (Dan Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega) on 'Big Mistakes'Credit: Spencer Pazer/Netflix

"She's messy and she's grouchy and she's rough around the edges, but there's also a real heartbeat to this character," Levy describes. "If we do our jobs well, the audience will understand why she is the way she is, which I think builds a bridge of emotional connection to the character."

It's Morgan's impulsive act of stealing a necklace as a gift for their dying grandmother that makes her and Nicky a target of a local crime organization, that then threatens them into servitude. Lots of hijinks, as they say, ensue.

"I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that I would give myself, that all of us are always trying to be good and righteous people, but she is struggling and she's not feeling very good about herself," Ortega says. "And when you're not feeling very good about yourself, it's hard to feel good about what anybody else has going on. It's hard to not naysay general positivity and enjoy even the small parts of life. She's in a place where everything feels stupid."

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That's not necessarily the part of Morgan that relates to Ortega's own story, but there are a few clear parallels. The comedienne lived in New York for a decade, including through the pandemic-induced quarantine era. She lived around 152nd Street and Broadway in the Hamilton Heights area when she got a job blogging for Elite Daily, a salaried gig that allowed her ditch waiting tables and more actively pursue improv comedy.

Her claim to fame at the time was a blog post about Dwayne Johnson. "The Rock Wins Best Dressed in Sexy Blue Velvet Suit at the 2017 Oscars" was the headline, and the article referred to the Fast & Furious star as "that delicious slab of buttery dude meat." Johnson thanked her directly on Instagram.

"Being on the Rock's Instagram felt huge," Ortega recalls. "Ultimately, what I do think is it's an inappropriate way to talk about Dwayne 'the Rock' Johnson, but I was like, 'He's so sexy,' and he was like, 'Thank you!'" she adds. "What was crazy about that job is people would go to the Oscars and then I would be 25 and I would get online and go, 'Hottest guy at the Oscars this year is the Rock,' and it would become the headline for the day."

Ortega doesn't think she would've been able to afford a creative career if it weren't for those jobs from the dotcom boom, which she says don't really exist anymore. She'd live tweet about the final season of HBO's Girls to make ends meet, while chasing stand-up sets and improv groups at the time. One of her first auditions was Saturday Night Live. In hindsight, the audition for that beloved late-night sketch-comedy series was the most intimidating thing she's ever done. At the time, she didn't quite clock the high-pressure situation.

"I was writing characters for the first time," she remembers of that time. "I had only ever improvised. I had not been writing my comedy down."

The end of that story is obvious: she didn't get the job, but Ortega remains in good company. "I would guess most people who have ever screen tested for that show, you've heard of them or seen them somewhere else eventually," she says. "It's a lot of people's first stop."

During this era of traversing the comedy scene of New York, Ortega would run into Rachel Sennott, the future creator of HBO hit comedy I Love LA, longtime bestie of The Bear Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri, star of films like Bottoms and Shiva Baby, and (more importantly) the co-creator of Big Mistakes with Levy. To best of Ortega's memory, they first met at Pine Box Rock Shop at Grattan Street in Brooklyn. It was a bar with "a tiny little venue in the back."

Taylor Ortega and Dan Levy on 'Big Mistakes'Credit: Netflix

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Cut to decades later when Levy brings in Sennott, having worked together on HBO's The Idol, to shape Morgan's voice. So much of Ortega's fast-paced delivery in this role feels catered to Sennott's writing: the dark wit, snappy quips, a hint of the redefined modern Valley Girl.

"Her performance in the show is so gymnastic," Levy describes of Ortega. "She has to pull off a laugh in one minute, and then a minute and a half later, she's terrified. That kind of elasticity is really hard, and humor is really hard. It's so much harder to do than drama."

It's still unclear how the public will embrace (or not) the work done on Big Mistakes, but the show arrives on solid ground, made from Levy's unimpeachable track record for good TV. While Ortega may have thought about what this all means for her career, she's still piecing together next steps.

"I came to this point in my career without a blueprint of how it works," she says. "I think that nobody in my family, other than my sister, does this: We've walked into it having to learn every step of the way. So we don't really know what's meant to come next. I've just been figuring it out with the people that I like to create with."

on Entertainment Weekly

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