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Veronika Slowikowska is the first Canadian to join the cast of Saturday Night Live in more than 25 years. She's also this season's breakout star. Now all she has to do is keep crushing it. Inside the slay-or-be-slayed world of Studio 8H

- BY COURTNEY SHEA PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS/NBC

IT IS AN ENDURING IF LARGELY UNSPOKEN TRUTH THAT EVERY NEW CAST MEMBER ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE FEELS THE PRESSURE TO BREAK OUT.

The show is an ensemble, but you don’t achieve stardom as a collective.

In the most important comedy career incubator of the modern age, not every embryo hatches—for every Will Ferrell or Amy Poehler, there is a John Milhiser or Emily Prager. Newbies in particular must navigate being a team player and projecting humility while also plotting their ascent.

Another truth: a good way to ascend quickly is to get a character on “Weekend Update.” SNL’s parody news segment was the show’s first hit skit back when the proverbial water cooler was an actual water cooler. From a personal branding perspective, it’s a rare opportunity for cast members to get a solo moment in the spotlight. The “Update”-to-icon pipeline is real: Gilda Radner killed as Roseanne Roseannadanna; Mike Myers and Dana Carvey were excellent as Wayne and Garth; Adam Sandler became a holiday staple with his Hanukkah and Thanksgiving songs. More recently, Bobby Moynihan channelled everyone's drunkest drunk uncle, and Bowen Yang was the outraged iceberg that took down the Titanic. This past February, Veronika Slowikowska unveiled Beth’s Maid of Honour, Katie, a bridesmaid incapable of delivering her wedding speech without veering into the day’s grittiest headlines. “I’m not here to talk about Beth; her Scrabble addiction; her dog, Skittles; or her best-friend-turned-husband, Cody,” Katie announced, mic in one hand, glass of prosecco in the other, before launching into a treatise on a Mexican drug cartel. El Mencho, she explained, had been killed on Sunday, “or as Beth and I like to call it, ‘bottomless mimosa day.’”