The First Look at Dan Levy's New Film Good Grief Is Emotional AF

'Schitt's Creek' creator Dan Levy is back with 'Good Grief,' a movie he says was shaped by a personal loss in his own life. EW has an exclusive first look at the movie, which also stars Luke Evans, Ruth Negga, and Himesh Patel. https://t.co/ZCJddkzMAr

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"In the early days when that idea was coming to fruition, it was originally conceived potentially as a romantic comedy, and then whatever press got out set what is now a very strange description of the movie," he said. "I see the movie as a drama or a dramedy."

"I lost my grandmother toward the tail end of the pandemic, and I was in a very strange headspace in terms of feeling the weight and the profound sense of tragedy of what the COVID pandemic had done for all of us, while at the same time trying to honor the passing of someone who meant so much to me," he added. "It was hard for me to feel the specificity of loss when all I was feeling was grief for so long. It was that conversation that really expedited the concept of the movie."

"I feel like the older we get, the more profound our relationships are with our friends and the more complicated they get," he explains. "Sometimes the people that are closest to us, we excuse the most in terms of having those hard conversations about life and bad habits and patterns of behavior that could be slightly course corrected. It's an uncomfortable conversation to have, and yet that intimacy exists within these friendships."

"When I went into it, I was still processing a lot," Levy said of the movie’s themes of grief and healing. "Not that we ever fully process grief, but that question of, am I grieving properly? Have I done enough? I do feel like, in making this movie, I have honored the grief that I felt at the time, that this is all I could do to celebrate the feelings that I had when my grandmother and my dog passed away. Sometimes if you have the ability to write, it's the greatest outlet for pain and catharsis."

While this new project is in some ways very different from Schitt’s Creek, Levy said it keeps the same spirit.

"In so many ways, I feel like they both share a level of uncomfortable honesty," he said. "I had to access the most vulnerable parts of my own self and my relationships in the hopes that they were universal. While Good Grief is tonally very different, I think the level of honesty is still there and a desire to remind people that things are going to be okay."