Veronika Slowikowska is the Internet’s Favourite Oddball

Growing up in Barrie, Ontario, in the early 2000s, Veronika Slowikowska shared a sense of humour with era-defining weirdo comedies like Napoleon Dynamite: her jokes were painfully awkward and without any obvious punchline. She earned the lead in her high school’s production of Spring Awakening, but Slowikowska wasn’t a cookie-cutter thespian. “The thing that separated me from all the other girls with long, blond hair who wanted stage careers was that I was funny,” she says. 

After graduation, Slowikowska was accepted to the Second City’s conservatory program in Toronto. She hustled her way through nightly sketch shows and booked the odd TV part, like a 2017 episode of Degrassi: Next Class. Her big break came in 2018, when she landed a bit part on What We Do in the Shadows, a series about suburban vampires co-created by Kiwi alt-comedy god Jemaine Clement. With a shiny new IMDb credit, Slowikowska was plotting her next move. Then, a comically timed global pandemic put everything on hold. 

By 2022, Slowikowska was working at Craig’s Cookies in Toronto, just as DIY comedy content was exploding on TikTok. So she launched her own account. One of her early skits, viewed by more than a million people, was a send-up of the reality show Is It Cake? Slowikowska’s unhinged character, however, used a butcher’s blade to test household objects, like tables and doors. With a new fanbase, she spent the summer of 2022 in L.A., where she landed her first lead on Davey and Jonesie’s Locker—think Bill and Ted for Gen Z—along with a role in the holiday romcom EXmas, alongside Leighton Meester. The director, she says, knew her from the internet.

Today, Slowikowska has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, but her bits—which have found fans in Justin Bieber and Jack Black—still stray from the mainstream, full of Michael Scott–like characters devoid of self-awareness. Still, she trusts that viewers who get it, get it. “In comedy, they often teach you that you need to explain every last thing to the audience,” she says. “I don’t think that’s true.” 

Slowikowska has two new writing partners, Kyle Chase and Michael Rees, who she met during a 2023 short-film shoot. They’ve since starred in a music video for Hovvdy, Slowikowska’s favourite band, and launched a weekly podcast called Nevermind, with random topics like conspiracy theories and internet fame. (This fall, Slowikowska and Chase are contemplating taking their show on the road.) Slowikowska may have found success in 30-second snippets, but she’s also scripting a feature-length film. “I can’t say much,” she says, adopting a goofy pretentious-thespy tone. “But it’s a comedy.”

Pop quiz

FAVOURITE STAND-UP SPECIALS: Zach Galifianakis: Live At The Purple Onion and Catherine Cohen: The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous.
COOKIE CRAVING: Chocolate chip, fresh out of the oven.
KARAOKE JAM: “Got To Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn.
APP ADDICTION: “Instagram has changed for me; it’s now my job. I love Video Leap, where I edit my reels. I also do the New York Times crosswords.”
BIG FEARS: “Losing my sanity—or elevators.”