Annie Murphy Opened Up About Being Depressed After ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Ended
The combo of therapy and antidepressants are helping her through it.
Though her character, Alexis Rose, on the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek was bubbly and rarely in her own head, there was a period while shortly after the show ended that real-life actor Annie Murphy was anything but. In a new interview with The Zoe Report, Murphy, who now stars in the upcoming genre-bending AMC show Kevin Can F**k Himself, opened up about how she could barely face fans while on the Schitt’s Creek farewell tour in January 2020.
I think I have a big dose of my dad’s Irish melancholy, Murphy said, explaining that her co-star Noah Reid (who played Patrick on the show) would help her put her brave face on ahead of the live performances. But after each show, she’d go home and cry.
“My mom was like, ‘You’re crying 12 times a day hysterically, to the point where your teeth are chattering. That’s not normal,'” she continued. Shortly after the pandemic forced a worldwide lockdown, Murphy began seeing a therapist who diagnosed her with depression. “I was like, ‘Damn it, I’m depressed,'” she told TZR. “Ugh.”
She said, “A lot of people are going to think that I sound like I’m playing a tiny violin for myself. Oh, you’re rich and famous. Why the fuck are you sad? You have nothing to be sad about. But I’m not going to post photos of me covered in my own snot, lying on the floor, unable to get up. I don’t want people to have to see that.”
But therapy and antidepressants have helped tremendously, Murphy said. I do not cry every single day on the floor 12 times…I am able to focus on other things in my life.
“Now, honestly, if a friend’s like, ‘I’m having a really hard time,’ I’m like, ‘Get on drugs. Get on drugs!’ You don’t have to be on drugs for the whole time, but they truly, truly saved my life in the sense that I was not a functional human being and I was able to be a functional human being.”
And that functional human being is now exploring roles that she hopes will broaden her acting résumé and show the world that she’s so much more than Alexis Rose. Kevin Can F**k Himself began airing June 20th and Murphy will also star alongside Natasha Lyonne in the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Russian Doll.
