'Schitt’s Creek' star Eugene Levy: Show is like watching Kardashians lose everything

Eugene Levy co-created the Pop TV series "Schitt's Creek" with his son Daniel, who brought him the riches-to-rags concept about a family who lose all their money, except for a town they originally bought as a joke, that they now have to live in for real.

"It's about a wealthy family losing their money, but it was kind of predicated on how much the TV audience already knows about wealthy families because of reality TV," the elder Levy told FOX411. "Because of the Kardashians, and going back to the Osbournes, and being a fly on the wall in these very wealthy homes, what would happen if you were a fly on the wall in these wealthy homes and the family discovered they have lost their money, what is that family dynamic going to be like now?"

Daniel and his daughter Sarah co-star in the show, as does Eugene's longtime collaborator Catherine O'Hara.

"I never take for granted that I'm watching my own kids on the floor. I'm always like 'there they are working with Catherine O'Hara.' I can't quite put it together. It's really quite amazing and I'm proud of both of them."

"I kind of find it hard to separate myself from who I am and my character," Levy adds. "When I'm especially doing scenes with them, if I'm doing a scene with Daniel or Sarah, I kind of think to myself this is the weirdest thing, is this real life or am I actually acting?"

But Levy learned the hard way not to break character on set.

"When we started the movies with Chris Guest, the first one, 'Waiting for Guffman,' we had a ball doing that, it was so funny. We did do a lot of laughing in that movie, but the thing about those movies because it is improvisation, it's so delicate because if you have something really funny in an improvisational way it’s hard to get that back again. It's hard to get that moment back again if a take is ruined because somebody laughs in the middle of it. Then you've got to do it again and it’s not quite the same. You don’t get the same spontaneity. So we learned over the next three films that we've got to have a bit more discipline to not laugh at ourselves, let's let the audience laugh at what we think is funny."

"Schitt’s Creek" returns to Pop TV March 16th for Season 2, and Season 3 has already been given the green light.