This past Sunday, the Schitt’s Creek cast was walking into the Critics’ Choice Awards when they were flagged down by an unexpected admirer: Nicole Kidman. The Oscar-winning actor had been watching the sitcom Dan Levy created and stars in with his father, Eugene Levy—about the wealthy, out-of-touch Rose family, who loses their fortune and is forced to move to the titular town they bought as a joke. And Kidman had taken a particular shine to Rose matriarch Moira—the daffy, egocentric actor played by Catherine O’Hara.

“She stopped Catherine to tell her that she was madly in love with her character,” Dan Levy told Vanity Fair Wednesday, still dumbstruck by the encounter four days later. “Then she turned and realized that our whole cast was standing behind Catherine, and she started gushing about the show. There are moments like that [when] you’re thinking, ‘How did we get here?’

“To have someone that I have respected for so long and looked up to in terms of her choices, sheer creativity, vulnerability, and breadth of her athleticism as an actor turn around and be talking about our show like we were doing something special was…” he trailed off. “It doesn’t feel real. I don’t know if I actually spoke a word to her. I think I just smiled and nodded as she spoke to me.”

Since its 2015 premiere, Schitt’s Creek has been beloved by its audience, but Levy is still processing the show’s late-breaking popularity surge—which became most visible last summer when the show earned its first four Emmy nominations, for its fifth season. It isn’t often that a sitcom receives that kind of late-bloomer recognition, and Levy isn’t taking any of it—especially the acknowledgment from Big Little Lies’s high priestess—for granted.

“This kind of upward trajectory is so rare and so special,” said Levy, “that the idea of overstaying our welcome is terrifying to me.”

That fear is one of the few reasons Levy is relieved to be ending Schitt’s Creek after the show’s sixth season, which premiered earlier this month on Pop TV. He remains confident, though, that the final episodes will satisfy devoted fans—Kidman included. In conversation, Levy was exacting with his words and thoughts. And he brought that meticulousness to plotting Schitt’s Creek’s last season—dissecting his favorite series finales to determine what elements made them fulfilling.

“With Sex in the City, they took us to Paris. They gave us clothes. It was elevated in a way that didn’t feel outside of itself, but was giving the fans everything they wanted,” Levy explained. “The same with Six Feet Under…there’s always the left hook of all of these finales too—a show proposing something where you think, ‘Hmm, that’s not exactly how I thought this was going to end, but now that you’ve shown it to me, I really love that and I can’t see it any other way.’ That’s what I sort of hoped we would do.”

Two episodes into season six, it seems as though there are two major events Schitt’s Creek is building towards: the release of Moira’s “comeback” vehicle, The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening, on the fictional streaming service InterFlicks, and David’s wedding to fiancé Patrick (Noah Reid).