It’s always nice to have friends in high places, so they can get you into even higher places. And is there a higher place than the Vatican?
On the latest episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast, Wiser Than Me, the host sits down with fellow comedy legend Catherine O’Hara to talk about their early days doing improv, being a funny woman in a comedic man’s world, and their respective Vatican stories.
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O’Hara met her husband, Bo Welch, through Tim Burton while they were all working on 1988’s Beetlejuice. Welch was a production designer on the movie and O’Hara was “grousing to Tim that this guy was talking to me everyday and never asked me out,” so, O’Hara says, “Tim Burton basically made him ask me out.”
O’Hara and Welch married in 1992, and are still married, but as a wedding gift, Burton gave the couple he helped set up a private tour of the Vatican. According to the Schitt’s Creek star, someone had given Burton the same gift and he had been “blown away” so he “passed it on” to O’Hara and Welch.
So, during their Vatican tour, O’Hara recalls this “wild” priest taking them everywhere, including the Pope’s closet and a private museum full of gifts, such as crowns and jewels, in glass cases given to the Vatican from all over the world.
The priest tour guide let the newlyweds open the cases and “take out crowns and pretend to be putting them in my husband’s backpack.”
When they were in the Pope’s closet (“Not a big closet. A small closet,” O’Hara notes) having a blessed old time, their tour guide actually got yelled at by another priest.
Louis-Dreyfus then shares her “Pope story,” involving Stephen Colbert and a bunch of other comedians and professionally funny people who were invited to the Vatican to meet with the Pope. His Holiness wanted to make a speech about “the importance of laughter and comedy and the spirituality of that.”
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The Veep star recalls being “totally flabbergasted” by the “pomp of it,” likening it, respectfully, to The Wizard of Oz.
“They’ve got their costumes — what are they called, the Swiss Guard — come walking in with the stripes and the feathers on top of their heads, and you expect them to sing, ‘Oh-weee-oh…,’ you know?”
O’Hara says she knew that event happened and that she was very jealous. But at least she got yelled at for being in the Pope’s closet.
Listen to the full episode of Wiser Than Me below.
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