Why Eugene Levy is a `reluctant traveler'

He famously played a motel co-owner in “Schitt’s Creek” and has been able to travel all over the world throughout his acting career, which spans five decades.

But Canadian star Eugene Levy freely admits that he’s “not fond of traveling” at all, describing himself as more of “the great indoors type of guy.”

“I don’t hate it. (Hate) is a very strong word,” Levy told CNN Travel. “But I don’t really love it.”

The Emmy winner is continually forced out of his comfort zone in his latest TV project “The Reluctant Traveler,” an eight-episode Apple TV+ travel series that follows Levy as he hesitantly travels to places like Finland, Costa Rica, South Africa and Tokyo. Famous for his deadpan delivery, Levy makes no attempt to even pretend that he’s getting any enjoyment out of many of the experiences

He describes a night hike through the Costa Rican rainforest as one of the “least pleasant” moments captured for the cameras, explaining that “the creepy crawly aspect” was particularly off putting.

“I would never have done that (a night hike through the rainforest) in a million years,” he says. “But I’m doing this to be able to try things I wouldn’t have tried and form an opinion. And I did form an opinion and you know what: didn’t like it. Wouldn’t do it again.”

So how did someone who says he’d “rather stay at home” than go on any sort of wild travel adventure end up fronting a travel show?

According to Levy, the idea came about when he was approached to appear in a more typical travel series and decided to explain to producers exactly why he was the absolute worst person for the job.

“They said, ‘That’s it. That’s the show,’ ” he explains, before stressing that he’s aware that being able to go to places that many people could only dream of is “kind of a great job.”

“Eight billion people would kill to be doing this,” he says. “But there’s an honesty about being able to say, ‘I truly didn’t enjoy that.’

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