Earlier this year, Jack Innanen found himself filming the second season of FX’s “Adults” on Peter Street in Toronto — directly across from the apartment building where, in his early 20s, he had called his parents to announce his dream of becoming an actor.
It was a full-circle moment for the now-27-year-old Ontario native. After building a massive online following through his absurdist one-man sketches, Innanen has quietly emerged as the secret weapon of two hit TV comedies. On “Adults” — which premiered last week with two new episodes on FX before streaming the next day on Disney+ — he stars as Paul Baker, an affable Canadian transplant who moves in with a tight-knit group of 20-somethings in New York. Meanwhile, on Dan Levy’s “Big Mistakes” (which Netflix has already renewed for Season 2), he plays a therapy-spouting, hopelessly devoted boyfriend oblivious to the criminal underworld his girlfriend has stumbled into.
Unsurprisingly, both roles feel like natural extensions of an online persona crafted by someone who — like so many in Gen Z — was essentially raised by the internet. Growing up in southwestern Ontario, Innanen spent countless hours watching early YouTube channels like Smosh and Good Neighbor, and TV sitcoms like “Workaholics.” Regardless of the medium, these creators often paired a straight man with an eccentric counterpart in outlandish skits — a dynamic that ultimately shaped Innanen’s own irreverent comedic style. (Today, his videos usually feature him playing both roles in rapid-fire conversations, turning mundane daily moments into surreal, deadpan arguments.)
Though he watched creators build full-time careers on YouTube and harboured his own dreams of entering entertainment, Innanen felt a Hollywood career was out of reach. Instead, he initially chose a more conventional path, enrolling as an astrophysics major at the University of Toronto, only to suffer what he describes as a nervous breakdown during his second year.
By that point, Innanen had grown disillusioned by a “lonely” academic existence spent grinding through daily problem sets, and the career prospects were hardly more inspiring. “I remember there was a pie chart that they presented in my program: 50 per cent would go into academics, and 50 per cent would go into military technology,” he recalled on a video call from his New York apartment. “I was like, ‘I thought I wanted to build the Mars Rover or something, so this is not for me.’”
That summer, in 2019, Innanen was desperate for any work that would get him out of Toronto. He lied about being fluent in Italian to land a gig teaching English to local kids, and spent his free time travelling from city to city. “That opened my mind that I could do other things outside of Toronto or Canada or myself, even,” he said, recalling that some of his first sketches were filmed in Italy. By September, spurred by the explosive rise of TikTok, he dropped out of school and vowed to post a video every single day to give a comedy career a real shot.
Despite having almost no acting experience, stepping into the world of “Adults” came naturally to Innanen, who immediately recognized his own younger self in Paul Baker.
“I think a Gen Z theme is, not a lack of trust of authority, but maybe a lack of respect for authority — sometimes in an ‘F — the institution’ way, but more of an, ‘Oh, this is all made up. This is all a construct.’ That was a big theme I remember in the scenes of the ‘Adults’ audition,” Innanen explained. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is all very true to my experience coming of age where you open the door to adulthood and you’re like, “Oh, I thought I was going to be this big, strong man and a wise figure, but it’s still me with the same body and the same mind.”’
Despite Innanen’s inexperience, creators Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold knew immediately upon seeing his tape that casting him was a no-brainer. “We knew we needed someone genuinely magnetic — but in the modern, painted-nails, reads-feminist-literature-and-calls-his-mom-twice-a-day way that we saw all our friends (guys and girls) falling hopelessly in love with,” Shaw wrote in an email. Besides being funny and charming, “Jack has an underlying goodness that felt like the missing piece in the puzzle for this character.”
Once Innanen was cast, Kronengold said, the creators retooled the character — who was originally conceived as being from Colorado — to be Canadian.
Riding the success of “Adults,” Innanen fuelled online fan-casting rumours early in the year by openly campaigning for a role in Season 2 of Crave’s smash-hit hockey romantic drama “Heated Rivalry.” Earlier this summer, however, a scheduling conflict reportedly forced him to pass on an offered role.
While he remains tight-lipped about the exact character he was offered, Innanen hasn’t ruled out working with Jacob Tierney in the future. “I love the hell out of him,” Innanen said. “I know that he has some really cool, new other projects coming up, so I would love to work with him in absolutely any way. Whatever he would have me in, I will be a part of.”
Innanen saw the irony in his big break bringing him back to his hometown, but he loved playing tour guide. On days off, he took his castmates shopping on Ossington, out to eat at his favourite spots — like Seoul Shakers on Bloor — and to Raptors and Leafs games. (Granted, as a diehard Leafs fan who also had childhood dreams of playing in the NHL, Innanen is still slightly miffed that the team sent nonfan Thiele two merch boxes and free tickets while he’s only gotten a single jersey to date.)
Nostalgia aside, filming “Adults” near his hometown has kept Innanen rooted in a Canadian screen industry that he sees gaining rapid traction. Like many other local creatives, he feels invigorated by the “crazy global momentum for Canadian stories in a very condensed time.”
“A very constant Canadian feeling is that the States are our sister country, and there’s this constant comparison of who we are by who we are not compared to Americans,” Innanen said. “Coming to the States, (the industry) feels a lot larger, and things move quicker. It’s so hard to make things in Canada — (only) really the strongest survive, and you get some really beautiful gems. I think the same can’t necessarily be said in the States. So it’s fun to be a part of these big American productions, but what I’ve learned in the last year is that there’s a lot of intentional care coming out of Canada, and now a lot of money coming in to support these projects.”
“It’s a really exciting time to be down here and working, but I’m excited to go back home and start working on (some of my ideas) hopefully soon,” he added. One of the projects on Innanen’s bucket list? A coming-of-age film set in a character’s late teens to early 20s — the exact era he decided to pursue his own aspirations.
