Eugene Levy’s Genuine Discomfort with Traveling on The Reluctant Traveler
Of the many tableaux that TV fans expected to watch this season, Eugene Levy tearing up while standing in a Glasgow synagogue wearing a tartan-patterned yarmulke was probably not high on the list.
But there he was, seeking out where his mother’s Eastern European refugee family had prayed a century ago, in one of the many insightful and slyly warm moments from The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy.
“He didn’t know exactly what he was going to be walking into,” David Brindley, executive producer of the Apple TV+ series, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
“I think it was in him to want to do these [kinds of] things. He just didn’t know it,” adds writer David Reilly.
On Friday ABC announced that Levy and his son and Schitt’s Creek collaborator Dan Levy will co-host the Emmys on Sept. 15. The appearance will provide a capper to an unusual year in which Eugene Levy can be seen on-screen bopping everywhere from Sweden to Spain — reluctantly — before arriving on stage at the Peacock Theater at L.A. LIVE.
“The show’s title is not a joke,” he wrote in an email to THR of the “reluctant” modifier. In keeping with that theme, Levy also politely did not answer a question about Emmys hosting when it was asked several days before the official announcement.
But if his AppleTV+ appearances are on any indication, it’s likely to be a wry and … semi-enthusiastic affair.
Stanley Tucci with his CNN travel show showed you the life you wish you had. Anthony Bourdain plumbed the mysteries of life you wanted to understand. Eugene Levy brings you into his life — a life that, like our own schleppy existence, is alternately active and sedentary, curious and indifferent.
Levy — the veteran Canadian comedian and Christopher Guest collaborator — has never much liked getting outside his comfort zone. So of course there’s a streaming show where he does just that, bopping all over the world to encounter local traditions.
In its second season, Traveler has itself received two Emmy nominations, for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special as well as outstanding writing for a nonfiction program, the latter for the Scotland episode. And this juxtaposition is why: The series takes you to the mostly wildly exotic places, with the most endearing kvetcher of a guide.
“You really do feel like you’re away with your friend,” says Reilly. This season, Levy prodded Joan Collins to point him to the seedy side of St. Tropez, skeptically made disturbing moose calls in rural Sweden and schmendrickally received penalty-kick pointers from La Liga star Héctor Bellerín in Seville.
Reilly and Brindley are two of the people who make that everyman vibe happen. All the interactions on the show are organic; the narration is written, with input from Levy. (Writers use a quasi-documentary approach, peppering him with off-camera questions after every interaction to get at his truest feelings.) The resulting tone is philosophical with a hint of the curmudgeon.
But at least some of that is an act — a persona, no?
“People often ask, ‘Is he really reluctant?’ ” says Brindley. “Yes. He really, really is. You ask him now what country he wants to go to in the world after doing 15 episodes and he can’t name one.”
That can’t possibly be true.
“After two seasons of doing The Reluctant Traveler, I can honestly say there is not one place in the world I badly want to go,” Levy writes.
Oh.
Still, that doesn’t mean he can’t have a good time along the way and bring us with him. The Scotland episode sandwiches the synagogue moment with Levy standing in an ornate castle doing Sean Connery impressions, visiting a tailor to custom-make a kilt, and at a ceilidh, dancing in a kilt and making jokes about the ventilation.
“He has this quality where, because of his open nature, he can fit in anywhere while feeling slightly out of place everywhere,” Reilly says.
Levy also visited the tenement where his mother grew up — which, he emails, “hit me on a much more emotional level than I ever anticipated it would.”
Having trekked to dozens of locations from Costa Rica to Finland, one might worry that the series will soon run out of destinations. Finding spots for season three, already ordered, could be a challenge.
The show’s staff says they still have a lot to work with. Levy’s only red line: a hot air balloon.
“The idea of going up in a basket with nothing but a balloon above him was a step too far,” Brindley says of what happened when they proposed that to him this season.
But is that the only no-go? Surely Levy has another?
“The Antarctic,” he wrote. “Too cold. Seasick. No cafés.”
A version of this story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.