Macaulay Culkin’s Emmys Tribute to Catherine O’Hara Left No Dry Eyes in the Room

Award show tributes can sometimes feel like formalities, a few polished sentences read off a card before the broadcast moves along. Every so often, though, one of these moments breaks through the usual polish and turns into something the room, and everyone watching at home, genuinely feels.

Monday night’s Emmy ceremony delivered exactly that kind of moment early in its In Memoriam segment. The tribute centered on Catherine O’Hara, the beloved comic actor who died on January 30 at age 71 following a short illness, and the segment brought together people who knew her not just as a colleague, but as family.

Macaulay Culkin took the stage alongside O’Hara’s ‘Schitt’s Creek’ co-stars Annie Murphy and Dan Levy to open the tribute, and what followed was less a formal eulogy than a son remembering his mother. Culkin played Kevin McCallister opposite O’Hara’s frantic, endlessly searching Kate McCallister in both ‘Home Alone‘ and its 1992 sequel, two holiday films that turned into generational touchstones.

Reflecting on how audiences often remember O’Hara’s character as the mom who kept losing track of her kid, Culkin flipped the joke on its head before turning sincere. “You remember her as the forget mother, right? But I will never forget about her,” he said, before listing the words he’d use to describe her: encouraging, warm, funny, and above all, “Mama.”

Macaulay Culkin pays tribute to the late Catherine O'Hara at the Emmys.

“We remember her as a forgetful mother, right? But we will never forget about her… She was my mom. She was our mama. By extension, she's all of our mama. Call your mother tonight.” pic.twitter.com/atbWk0TPRU

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) September 15, 2026

Culkin made clear that his bond with O’Hara extended well past their shared screen time. “She wasn’t just a wife and mother to Bo, Matthew, and Luke, she was my mom. She was our mama — and by extension, she’s all of our mama,” he said, according to the AP’s coverage of the ceremony, before urging viewers watching at home to call their own mothers that night.

He closed his portion of the tribute with the line that stuck with audiences most. “She may have forgotten me twice, but we will always remember her,” Culkin said, a nod to the two ‘Home Alone’ films in which her character famously left him behind before racing back to find him.

The moment carried extra weight given how visibly close the two remained over the years. O’Hara appeared alongside Culkin in 2023 when he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and following her death, Culkin shared his own personal tribute to her on social media, writing that he’d wanted more time to sit with her and tell her everything he still had to say.

O’Hara’s Emmy history stretched back decades before her passing. She won her first Emmy in 1982 for writing on ‘SCTV Network,’ having been an original cast member on the sketch series in the late 1970s, and went on to guest star across shows like ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ and ’30 Rock’ in the years that followed.

Her most celebrated television role arrived later in her career, when she was cast as Moira Rose on ‘Schitt’s Creek’ in 2015, a performance that earned her a second Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2020. She was also nominated twice more in 2025, for her supporting role in ‘The Studio’ and a guest turn on ‘The Last of Us,’ underscoring just how active and beloved her work remained right up until the end.

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