The Internet Oddball

How comedian Veronika Slowikowska got all of TikTok in on her jokes

- Courtney Shea

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.