Macaulay Culkin got visibly emotional. That's the detail everyone's talking about this morning after the 2026 Emmys' In Memoriam segment, where Culkin, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy stood together to honour Catherine O'Hara, who died in January at 71.

Culkin played O'Hara's forgotten-and-then-remembered son in the Home Alone films. Murphy and Levy were her onscreen children across six seasons of Schitt's Creek. All three called her their mother, more or less unprompted, more than once.

"She was my mom. She was our mom. And by extension, she's all of our mom," Culkin said, before adding, half-joking, "call your mother again, for real." He described O'Hara as encouraging, warm and funny, and noted that despite her Home Alone character forgetting him twice on screen, "we will always remember her." Page Six reported he choked up mid-tribute.

Murphy went for the laugh line that also read as the truest thing said all night. "Catherine's laugh was a perpetual yes and," she said, describing how it "challenged anyone who heard it to join in and be as delighted as she was." She also described smaller, stranger moments of grief since O'Hara's death, including a note passed to her on an Air Canada flight and a gas station attendant who teared up with her over the loss.

Levy, who created Schitt's Creek and wore a black rose on his lapel for the occasion, said the biggest thing O'Hara taught him was to say yes. Yes to her instincts. Yes to a rewrite emailed the night before, signed "Dear Dan, some thoughts." Yes to wigs that got their own names. "Say yes to her dinner invites and her stories and her wisdom and her generosity," he said. "Those are the things you will hold onto the tightest."

Noah Kahan performed a version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as the wider In Memoriam segment played out.

A year of tributes

Monday's segment is only the latest. Page Six reported that O'Hara died of a pulmonary embolism and was laid to rest at a private memorial at St. Martin of Tours Church in Los Angeles. Rachel McAdams referenced her at the Oscars in March, and she appeared in that same month's SAG Awards In Memoriam as well, where she became the first woman honoured with a posthumous SAG-AFTRA award, for her role as Patty Leigh in Apple TV's The Studio. Seth Rogen accepted on her behalf that night, saying she proved "you can be a genius and kind."

Eugene Levy, her onscreen husband on Schitt's Creek, called working with her over five decades an honour in a statement issued after her death.

The Emmys telecast itself, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, was dominated elsewhere by The Pitt's leading nomination haul and Hacks' record comedy tally. But for a few minutes on Monday night, the ceremony belonged to three people insisting, in three different ways, that they hadn't finished saying thank you.