The Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV (Second City Television) was a brilliant showcase for the talents of The Second City’s Toronto company, by way of a fictional TV station that showcased crazy characters and was also run by crazy characters while satirizing the concept of television itself, including the news, talk shows, game shows, children’s shows, dance shows, movies, commercials, network executives and everything from Leave it to Beaver to Battle of the Network Stars to Days of Our Lives. The series made its debut on the Canadian network Global, later migrating to CBC and finally Superchannel, running for a total of six seasons from 1976 to 1984, while most American viewers became fans of the show once it started airing its fourth season on NBC under the name “SCTV Network 90” from 1981 to 1983 before airing its final season on Cinemax as “SCTV Network” from 1983 to 1984.

The writers and sketch performers on this show were the ones responsible for its zany but sharp sense of humor, and they joined this show less than a decade after they joined Second City itself, which means that SCTV is the reason why many of them are famous today. In this article I will go through each of the show’s main cast members to explain where they came from before SCTV and where their career went after SCTV.

John Candy

Before SCTV

Ontario-born John Candy started out on the stage in small roles in the early 1970s, which eventually led to him becoming an improv comic at The Second City in 1972. His experience on stage led to small roles on children’s television shows like Cucumber, which aired in 1975 on TVOntario and centered on a moose and a beaver (played in costume by Alex Laurier and Nikki Tilroe) who live in a treehouse and educate viewers about various topics. John Candy also found regular roles in the CBC children’s shows Dr. Zonk and the Zunkins (1974-75) and Coming Up Rosie (1975) before he followed his fellow Second City performers to SCTV, which turned John Candy into a North American celebrity.

After SCTV

Candy immediately landed some pretty big films, including Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), The Blues Brothers (1980) and Stripes (1981). He also provided his voice for the Canadian animated sci-fi anthology Heavy Metal (1981) for which Candy received praise for his vocal performance as Den, including from Den’s original creator Richard Corden. Candy later appeared in Disney’s Splash (1984), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Mel Brooks’ Star Wars parody Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988) and Uncle Buck (1989). Candy also voiced himself in a Saturday morning cartoon he helped develop for NBC called Camp Candy which ran for three seasons from 1989 to 1992, and he voiced Wilbur the albatross in Disney’s The Rescuers Down Under (1990). Candy made appearances in a few more hit films in the 1990s, including Home Alone (1990), JFK (1991) and Rookie of the Year (1993) and he had his first big comedy hit in a while starring as the bobsled coach in Disney’s sports comedy Cool Runnings (1993), but he had a heart attack in his sleep while working on the Western comedy Wagons East and he died in 1994, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most beloved actors among film fans and SCTV fans.

Joe Flaherty

Before SCTV

The American comedian Joe Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but moved to Chicago to join The Second City in 1969, later appearing on The National Lampoon Radio Hour in the 1970s working alongside many future Saturday Night Live stars. Flaherty eventually moved to Canada to help establish the Toronto branch of Second City, which led to his work as a writer and performer on SCTV, where he became well-known for playing characters like SCTV president Guy Caballero, talk show host Sammy Maudlin and horror movie host Count Floyd.

After SCTV

After SCTV ended, Flaherty reprised his SCTV character Count Floyd for the live-action segments of Hanna-Barbera’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (1988). He also had starring roles in the sitcom Maniac Mansion (1990-93) and in Judd Apatow’s teen comedy Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) and he also  had guest roles in shows like Married… with Children, Dinosaurs, Ellen, Even Stevens, That ’70s Show, The King of Queens, Frasier, Clone High, Family Guy and American Dad! as well as roles in films like Stripes (1981), Heavy Metal (1981), Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (1985), Innerspace (1987), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Happy Gilmore (1996), Freddy Got Fingered (2001) and Disney’s animated comedy Home on the Range (2004) as the voice of Jeb the goat. He retired from acting in the 2010s.

Eugene Levy

Before SCTV

After Ontario actor Eugene Levy graduated with a BA in sociology from McMaster University in his hometown of Hamilton, he joined the cast of Stephen Schwartz’s 1972 Toronto production of Godspell, acting alongside future comedy stars and fellow Second City performers Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner and Martin Short. After a few years in Second City’s main company, Levy was recruited to join SCTV, often playing mild-mannered and nerdy characters.

After SCTV

Eugene Levy had film roles in Heavy Metal (1981), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Splash (1984), Father of the Bride (1991) and Stay Tuned (1992) among others, and he also co-wrote and starred in Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006), while Levy’s most popular big screen character is probably Noah Levenstein from the teen comedy American Pie (1999), a role he would reprise throughout the American Pie series. Levy also lent his voice to well-known films like Curious George (2006), DreamWorks Animation’s Over the Hedge (2006), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Pixar’s Finding Dory (2016) for which he voiced Dory’s father. As for his post-SCTV television career, Levy co-created, wrote, executive produced and starred in both Maniac Mansion (1990-93) and Schitt’s Creek (2015-20), the former a very loose adaptation of the 1987 PC adventure game that was produced by Lucasfilm, and the latter a popular and critically acclaimed sitcom starring Levy as the patriarch of a wealthy family who suddenly loses their money, co-starring co-creator and Eugene Levy’s real life son Daniel Levy as his son with Catherine O’Hara as his wife and Annie Murphy as his daughter. Levy has also made appearances on Mad About You, The Drew Carey Show and Only Murders in the Building and he has lent his voice to animated shows like Camp Candy, Duckman, Hercules, Dilbert and Human Resources as well as hosting the 2023 Apple TV docuseries The Reluctant Traveler in which Levy forces himself to be more outgoing to funny results.

Andrea Martin

Before SCTV

Portland, Maine-born drama club student Andrea Martin toured the stage playing Lucy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown before moving to Canada and finding steady work in Toronto, including the improv comedy she honed at Second City and the 1972 Toronto production of Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell. She was later hired to join Second City’s sketch comedy TV series SCTV, where she was most famous for playing SCTV station manager and chatterbox Edith Prickley.

After SCTV

Andrea Martin made her Tony-winning Broadway debut in the musical My Favorite Year in 1992 and was later nominated again for her roles in Candide (1997), Oklahoma! (2002) and Young Frankenstein (2007). She continues to perform to this day, with some of the shows she appeared on throughout her stage career including The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Rose Tattoo, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fiddler on the Roof, On the Town, Pippin and A Christmas Carol. She also became well-known for her film role as Aunt Voula in the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and its sequels, and she had a main role in the short-lived and underrated NBC sitcom Great News (2017-18) and recurring roles in the Hulu comedy Difficult People as Julie’s mother, the CBS supernatural drama Evil as Sister Andrea and in Only Murders in the Building as Charles’s makeup artist Joy Payne, as well as recurring voice roles as Aunt Miriam in Rugrats, Queen Slug-for-a-Butt in Earthworm Jim, Ms. Winifred Fowl in Jimmy Neutron and Ron Stoppable’s mother in Kim Possible. You may have also seen or heard Andrea Martin in guest roles on Sesame Street, Batman: The Animated Series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, Nurse Jackie, 30 Rock, Modern Family, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Good Fight and The Gilded Age.

Catherine O’Hara

Before SCTV

Born and raised in Toronto, Catherine O’Hara started her comedy career as a cast member of The Second City’s Toronto company where her brother also performed, originally working as Gilda Radner’s understudy until Radner left to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. O’Hara actually had her big break at Second City when she replaced another performer who had to drop out. That was when people realized how brilliant she was on the stage. O’Hara had been a resident Second City player ever since and she would also go on to be a regular on SCTV.

After SCTV

O’Hara had a successful film career, starring in Martin Scorsese’s cult classic black comedy After Hours (1985), Mike Nichols’ rom-com Heartburn (1986) alongside Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, Tim Burton’s macabre comedy Beetlejuice (1988), Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990) and both Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) as Kate McCallister while also providing the voices for both Sally and Shock in Disney’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Christopher Guest apparently also liked working with her because he gave her roles in Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). She also lent her voice to Chicken Little (2005), Over the Hedge (2006), Monster House (2006), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), Frankenweenie (2012), The Addams Family (2019), Elemental (2023) and The Wild Robot (2024) and she made appearances on TV shows like The Larry Sanders Show, Tales from the Crypt, Mad TV, Dr. Katz, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 30 Rock, Modern Family, A Series of Unfortunate Events and the Kids in the Hall reboot. She was still receiving praise late in her career for her portrayal of Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek (2015-20) as well as former studio head Patty Leigh in Apple TV comedy The Studio (2025) and Joel’s therapist Gail in the post-apocalyptic HBO drama The Last of Us (2025), before she died in 2026 from cancer.

Harold Ramis

Before SCTV

Harold Ramis was an aspiring playwright from Chicago who wrote comedies while in college. He got the opportunity to do freelance work for the Chicago Daily News and he worked with his college friend Michael Shamberg in his guerilla television endeavor TVTV working the underground press in the 1970s. It was around this time that Ramis’s interest in comedy and plays led him to the Second City stage in Chicago, where he made a great deadpan foil for performers like John Belushi. This work eventually led Ramis to The National Lampoon Radio Hour and later SCTV where he was head writer and a performer during the show’s early seasons.

After SCTV

After SCTV Ramis pursued a film career by writing the script for the comedy that would eventually become the John Belushi vehicle National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) alongside National Lampoon writers Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller. The raunchy frat comedy became a huge hit with its target audience and is now a comedy classic. Ramis also had a hand in a few other comedy classics released during this period, co-writing Ivan Reitman’s Meatballs (1979), co-writing and starring in both Reitman’s war comedy Stripes (1981) and his supernatural comedy Ghostbusters (1984), co-writing and directing the golf-themed Rodney Dangerfield comedy Caddyshack (1980) and directing the road trip comedy National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) from a script by National Lampoon writer John Hughes. Ramis also reunited with Dangerfield when he helped write Back to School (1986) and helped conceive the story for the animated film Rover Dangerfield (1991), as well as co-writing Ghostbusters II (1989) and co-writing and directing the classic rom-com fantasy Groundhog Day (1993) starring Bill Murray as a man reliving the same exact day over and over opposite Andie MacDowell. His last few hit films were the comedy Analyze This (1999) starring Robert De Niro as a mafioso and Billy Crystal as his psychiatrist, and another rom-com fantasy starring Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley called Bedazzled (2000) which was a moderately successful remake of the 1967 British film by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Ramis also had acting roles in Heavy Metal (1981), As Good As It Gets (1997), Knocked Up (2007) and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).

Dave Thomas

Before SCTV

Ontario native Dave Thomas was a copywriter at an ad agency who worked his way up the ladder to become head writer for The Coca Cola Company in Canada, but after watching a Second City show in Toronto, he left what he found to be a boring corporate job to audition for the improv comedy troupe and was accepted. He had the opportunity to perform in Godspell during its run in Toronto as a replacement cast member and he later achieved fame when he joined SCTV.

After SCTV

His popularity with Rick Moranis as one half of the McKenzie Brothers on SCTV led Thomas to co-write and co-direct the McKenzie Brothers vehicle Strange Brew (1983) which has since become a cult comedy hit. That film was followed years later by an animated McKenzie Brothers series called Bob and Doug (2009-11) which aired on Global. Thomas later joined the cast of the ABC sitcom Grace Under Fire (1993-98) and he has made appearances in The Larry Sanders Show, The Red Green Show, That ’70s Show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Arrested Development, Weeds and How I Met Your Mother in addition to the FOX procedural drama Bones which he also wrote for and produced, leading to Thomas also becoming a writer and a producer on the NBC crime thriller The Blacklist. Thomas and Moranis reunited to voice the moose brothers Tuke and Rutt in Disney’s animated films Brother Bear (2003) and Brother Bear 2 (2006) as a takeoff on the McKenzie Brothers, and Thomas also voiced many animated characters in well-known TV shows like Animaniacs, Duckman, The Simpsons, CatDog, The Legend of Tarzan, Justice League and Fast & Furious Spy Racers.

Robin Duke

Before SCTV

Robin Duke is an Ontario native who went to the same high school as Catherine O’Hara and joined O’Hara on the stage at Second City in 1976, later joining the cast of SCTV during its run in 1980.

After SCTV

She left SCTV to become a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1981 to 1984 and she later co-founded the Canadian sketch comedy troupe Women Fully Clothed in 2004. She has also appeared in the movie Groundhog Day (1993) and the TV shows Maniac Mansion, Monk, Man Seeking Woman and Schitt’s Creek while also voicing characters in various Canadian animated shows like The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Bad Dog, George and Martha, Atomic Betty, 6Teen and Max & Ruby. She now teaches improv at Humber College’s comedy writing and performance program in Toronto.

Rick Moranis

Before SCTV

Toronto comedian Rick Moranis began his career as a disc-jockey in the mid-1970s at local radio stations, later performing a spoof of Hockey Night in Canada on CBC-TV with his comedy partner Rob Cowan, which became his first big claim to fame. This popularity led to a lot of national exposure on Canadian television and his friend and fellow comedian Dave Thomas persuaded Moranis to join SCTV during its third season in 1980, with Moranis becoming a fan favorite for his celebrity impressions and especially as one half of the McKenzie Brothers opposite Dave Thomas in the popular Great White North sketch, which led to the 1983 McKenzie Brothers film Strange Brew which became Rick Moranis’s first major film role.

After SCTV

Moranis became a well-known film star in the 1980s after Strange Brew, appearing in Ghostbusters (1984), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), Parenthood (1989), My Blue Heaven (1990), L.A. Story (1991), Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), The Flintstones (1994) and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (1997), that last film being noteworthy not just for being the last time Moranis portrayed inventor Wayne Szalinski but also for being Disney’s first straight-to-video live-action film and the last role for Rick Moranis in a live-action film before he took a break from acting to spend more time with his family, although he will be reprising his role of Dark Helmet in the 2027 sequel Spaceballs: The New One, which may or may not be the start of an acting comeback. He has also lent his voice to the moose Rutt in both Brother Bear (2003) and Brother Bear 2 (2006) opposite Dave Thomas as his brother Tuke, both basically playing animal alter egos of the McKenzie Brothers from SCTV.

Tony Rosato

Before SCTV

Italian-Canadian Tony Rosato moved from Italy to Canada at the age of four and studied at the University of Toronto before dropping out to perform improv comedy at The Second City, later joining the cast of SCTV in the fall of 1980 the same year as Robin Duke and Rick Moranis.

After SCTV

Both Tony Rosato and Robin Duke would leave SCTV to join Saturday Night Live in the 1981-82 season but Rosato only lasted one year on the show because he and producer Dick Ebersol didn’t see eye to eye. After SCTV and SNL, Rosato had a recurring role on the Canadian police drama Night Heat (1985-89) and later found success in the world of animation voicing Luigi in both The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990) and Super Mario World (1991) and providing voices for The Busy World of Richard Scarry, Stickin’ Around, The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, George and Martha, Atomic Betty and other Canadian cartoons often working with Nelvana.

Martin Short

Before SCTV

Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1950, Martin Short was a show business enthusiast from a young age (even pretending to be a talk show host in his attic) and when he became old enough he moved to Toronto to pursue acting. He landed some commercial jobs before eventually getting his big break being cast in Stephen Schwartz’s 1972 production of Godspell. Afterward Short found more work in the theater and on television, even playing a hare in Cucumber, although he was initially reluctant to join The Second City, resistant to the expectation of being funny on demand when he saw himself as more of a traditional vaudeville-style performer. But Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas both encouraged Short to pursue comedy and he officially decided to join the improv troupe in 1977 as well as SCTV during the show’s 1982-83 season where he became known for characters like Las Vegas performer Jackie Roberts Jr., geeky weirdo Ed Grimley and interviewer Brock Linehan.

After SCTV

After SCTV Martin Short joined Saturday Night Live for one year in the 1984-85 season, which was SNL‘s most popular season since Eddie Murphy was still a cast member. Short brought some of his SCTV characters to SNL and helped revive that show’s fanbase. Short continues to perform on stage in plays and in musicals and he has headlined specials on HBO, CBC and Netflix as well as hosting award shows and making many memorable and hilarious appearances on talk shows through the years, including his own talk show where he plays an obnoxious TV host named Jiminy Glick who interviews real celebrities. Jiminy Glick has his own sub fanbase. Short has also reprised his SCTV and SNL character Ed Grimley in the animated series The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley which ran for one season on NBC, he created, wrote, produced and starred in the similarly short-lived NBC sitcom The Martin Short Show (1994) and he hosted his own syndicated talk show from 1999 to 2000 that was also called The Martin Short Show. Short also had a recurring role on the drama Damages in 2010, voiced the Cat in the Hat in the animated educational children’s show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That (2010-18) and is currently one of the main characters opposite Steve Martin and Selena Gomez in Only Murders in the Building (2021-present) on Hulu. Other TV series Short has appeared on through the years include The Tracey Ullman Show, Maniac Mansion, Merlin, Mad TV, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Law & Order: SVU, Weeds, How I Met Your Mother, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Difficult People, Modern Family and Schmigadoon! while movies Short has appeared in include Three Amigos (1986), Innerspace (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), Alice in Wonderland (1999), The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014) in addition to voicing characters in the movies The Prince of Egypt (1998), Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Madagascar 3 (2012), Frankenweenie (2012) and The Addams Family (2019) and the TV shows Dora the Explorer, BoJack Horseman, The Simpsons, Big Mouth and Grimsburg.