“Schitt’s Creek” star Eugene Levy is traveling up a river without a paddle in the Apple TV+ series “The Reluctant Traveler.”
Despite visiting exotic locations – Costa Rica, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Maldives, Portugal, South Africa – and staying in stunning luxury hotels where the room rates soar above $1,000 a night, Levy, 76, points out the obvious: It’s a travel show hosted by a curmudgeon who loathes traveling.
“I’m just not an adventurous guy,” Levy tells USA TODAY. “It’s the whole experience, starting with: I hate airports. Taking off my shoes and belt, putting my laptop and phone in separate bins. And then security goes through my bag. And the worst that happened recently: At the gate, I realized I forgot my laptop in the bin, but you can’t just go back, because you already went through security. Well, just let me go home then.”
Here’s how Levy, who won two Emmys producing and starring in “Schitt’s Creek,” became the grimacing face of “The Reluctant Traveler With Eugene Levy” (streaming weekly on Fridays).
Producers made a travel show offer no one could refuse. Eugene Levy did.
AppleTV+ producers approached Levy with an idea that no sane person would turn down: Hosting an international luxury hotel show called “A Room With A View.”
“I thought, ‘Jeez, there are 8,000 people jumping through the roof to do this show,” Levy says. “But I had to be honest. I’m just not the person for the job. I don’t even like going off the beaten track.”
The Canadian comic actor kept saying “no” in the best kind of way during follow-up talks. “As I discussed every reason I don’t like traveling, I was getting laughs on the phone,” says Levy. The producers called back with a new temperamentally tailored pitch. “It became somebody who doesn’t love to travel doing a travel show,” says Levy. “I said, ‘OK, now this could work.’ “
Levy feared Utah helicopter death, wasn’t game for reindeer meat
“Reluctant Traveler ” puts Levy through comically uncomfortable moments in his world-class locations. He samples reindeer meat in Finland (“you want a good steak, but instead you get this really game-y meat”) and takes down exotic sushi from Japan.
“I don’t eat sushi. Put it on a stove with some flames, make sure it’s cooked,” says Levy. “I don’t want little bacterial things from raw fish going through my body and ending up in my brain.”
The “American Pie” star suffers through a Costa Rican rainforest suspension bridge and a precarious helicopter ride over Utah’s Horseshoe Bend. “I really don’t like heights,” says Levy. “And on that helicopter, there’s just a window between you and an 8,000-foot death.”
Levy barely contains his displeasure during a Costa Rican forest therapy session. “Therapy in general is just not for me. But forest therapy? I guess if you’ve got to make a living,” Levy says.
Levy nixed the elephant stool sample, but backed down
The “Reluctant” host came the closest to putting his foot down over an encounter with a South African elephant’s backside when a veterinarian asked Levy to help collect a stool sample.
“I literally said, ‘No! I’m not going up the back end of an elephant for a stool sample,” says Levy. “And then I hear my producer off camera saying, ‘Oh, I think you can do it.’ I thought, ‘OK, for the show. Let’s put a glove on.’ ”
The incident still scars.
“You never stop washing afterward. I’ll put it that way, even with the glove,” says Levy. “I never want to go through that again. I felt so bad for the elephant, too. The vets know what they are doing with their backgrounds. My background is comedy.”
The hotels are stunning, the trips were life-changing
Even Levy relished staying at the Costa Rican eco-hotel Nayara Tented Camp, where the rates begin at $1,000 a night, and Lisbon, Portugal’s Verride Palácio de Santa Catarina Hotel, along with Venice’s historic Gritti Palace.
But the admittedly shy actor says it’s the experiences with local people that opened his mind. “Before the show, I was almost proud of the philosophy, ‘You do what you do, and let me do what I do,’ ” says Levy. “But after traveling to these places, and having to go out of my comfort zone to experience things, I’ve changed. A good change.”
Levy even came around to floating in frozen Finnish water in an insulated immersion suit and a local guide.
“Of course, that came after many Finnish vodka shots,” says Levy. “Once you’re in, it’s somehow just the most relaxing thing floating in that water, looking up at the sky.”
