Canadian comedian Jack Innanen pivots from social media to mainstream TV in new FX/Disney+ series Adults

Globe and Mail

2 days ago

Jack Innanen, the Ontario-born comedian and actor, has 3.3 million followers on TikTok, where he posts smart mini-dramas about absurdities that lurk in plain sight. In Performative Man in New York City, he packs vinyl records and a turntable into his Strand bookstore bag, ostentatiously reads The Bell Jar while drinking matcha, then crosses 'Drink matcha' off his to-do list. In Guy That Didn't Venmo Jesus for the Last Supper, Hearing the News on Easter, he looks pained as he says into the phone, 'I just, I didn't know you could do that. No, no, it's awesome, I'm happy for him.'
Innanen (pronounced IN-a-nin) began posting as a 19-year-old at the University of Toronto, disillusioned with his astrophysics courses (for real). Six years later, his TikToks have landed him sponsorship deals with Dior Sauvage, a modelling stint for RL Polo Red, and his current gig: co-starring on the new FX/Disney+ sitcom Adults, which is set in New York City but filmed in Toronto. It's a Gen-Z update of Friends, if the friends were queer, racially diverse, raunchy, overburdened by technology and threatened by imminent climate disaster.
He plays Paul Baker, a character so charismatic, so supremely chill, that everyone calls him by his first and last names, every time. He's that Paul Baker. The Paul Baker. He may be a grad student. He may be a maître d'. The character was originally from Colorado, but once Innanen was cast, he became Canadian. He shares a house with four other 20-somethings in Queens, and everyone in the borough – everyone in the city – seems to know him.
Paul Baker has an enthusiastic-stoner deadpan, excellent hair and just the right mustache. He's half-cool, half-oblivious. He and his housemates – Samir (Malik Elassal), fretful; Billie (Lucy Freyer), bewildered that being the smartest girl in school doesn't matter anymore; Anton (Owen Thiele), a quippy drama king; and Issa (Amita Rao), delusionally confident – pee together, shave each other's armpits, know when each other's periods are due and discuss their sexual adventures with ribald frankness.
The dialogue is zippy, and the plots skitter though 21st-century conundrums: sexual harassment, cancel culture, being the 'office youth expert.' ('Make your bosses think you could cancel them on an app they don't use,' Isa advises Billie.) The posse is facing that moment when the end of youth crashes into the impossibility of adulthood. Or, as Samir says, 'I always thought the world would be waiting for me, and instead it's annoyed that I'm here.'
Sometimes Paul Baker is aware of that. 'Remember when a plan for Saturday was just 'Park'?' he asks wistfully. When a gun-store owner calls him a fruitcake and also hits on him, his face goes slack with confusion as he mutters, 'What is the spectrum of your language?' When a man near him on the subway begins masturbating, he stands and reads off his phone, 'Sir, you are experiencing a mental-health crisis' – but stops mid-sentence, because he hits a paywall. But mostly he glides through life, cushioned by his mellow charm.
I won't say that Innanen was typecast, exactly, but the similarities are there. Both actor and character share a slo-mo exuberance, an off-kilter wonder at the weirdness of the world. 'I'm more self-aware than Paul Baker, for good and bad. More self-critical,' Innanen says during a recent video interview. 'But it's fun to play someone who's along for the ride, down for anything.'
Like Innanen's TikToks, his sitcom homes in on situations 'where authority turns into petulance – that's always hilarious to me,' he says. 'It's the Gen-Z approach to the world. We're in the depths of the corporate world or bureaucracy, and we're like, 'Hey, man, what are we doing? I have to write a cheque and mail it to the government? Can't I just e-transfer you my taxes?''
Adults was created by Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, romantic partners who themselves got Hollywood's attention after a comic speech they delivered at their Yale graduation, class of 2018, went viral. In it, Shaw announces she's ready to break up with Yale; Kronengold, startled, tries to talk her out of it ('Yale may not be the most well-endowed college, but it's pretty well endowed'), while Hillary Clinton, seated on stage behind them, cracks up.
Innanen, Shaw and Kronengold join a growing roster of talent who've made the leap from social to legacy media. Brian Jordan Alvarez parlayed dance routines on TikTok into the super-smart sitcom English Teacher, on FX/Disney+. Benito Skinner – whose handle is BennyDrama – recently launched Overcompensating (also shot in Toronto) on Prime Video. So when the publicity machine behind Adults anxiously requested that I not label Innanen a TikTok star, it felt like such an old-media-meets-Gen Z clash that it could be an episode of the show.
'I'm 26 and I'm a TikToker – that's a hard sell to your girlfriend's dad,' Innanen says with a grin. 'I was a little mama's boy goody two-shoes. I'd make my bed and fold my PJs. I was always on time for school, but sometimes I'd purposely do a lap around the block to show up five minutes late. Instead of the navy socks I was supposed to wear with my high school uniform, I'd wear elephant socks. Take that, authority. So saying, 'Hey mom and dad, I want to drop out of university to make videos online' was definitely a tough conversation.
'But the beauty of social media is, it isn't just a stepping stone,' he continues. 'I love doing it and want to keep doing it, as well as continue to act. I think the world is blurring that way – funny is funny, no matter what the format.' Take that, authority.
Three weeks before the cameras rolled on Adults, the producers brought the cast, newcomers all, to Toronto to bond. When the others learned that Innanen hadn't had a splashy, U.S.-style high school prom, they threw him one. But in typical Gen-Z fashion, no one discussed what the era should be. 'So I wore a houndstooth jacket, and Amita and Owen showed up in Y2K-Paris Hilton-style tight denim,' Innanen says. 'Lucy wore a Disney princess dress, and Rebecca and Ben went elegant contemporary.
'And that's what our show is about. The characters aren't getting it right. But their hearts are in the right place, and they're trying. There's a lot of beauty in Gen Z. People call us weak or fragile, but our generation is more competent than we're given credit for. There's a lot of dissonance between our biology and the technology and society we deal with. 'AI took my job yesterday, now I've got to pivot.' Give some grace to Gen Z. There's resilience there.'
So, does Innanen feel like an adult? 'The only time is when a mom tells her kid, 'Get behind that man in line,' and I realize she's talking about me. Oh, right, I have a mustache, I'm a man. Besides that, I'm still working on it.'