Veronika Slowikowska attends the Netflix Tires Season 2 premiere in June, 2025. Tires is just one of the shows in which Ms. Slowikowska, a native of Barrie, Ont., has appeared in the U.S.Chris Saucedo/Getty Images
Saturday Night Live is adding a Canadian comedian to its cast for its upcoming 51st season – just as another Canadian who has played a major role in the writer’s room in recent seasons is departing.
Veronika Slowikowska confirmed on social media Tuesday that she would be joining NBC’s weekly sketch comedy and music show as one of five new featured players.
“Dream come true,” Slowikowska posted on her Instagram. “See you Saturdays.”
Slowikowska – who is from Barrie, Ont., and was once part of an all-female comedy troupe called My Chemical Bromance – has more than 1 million followers on Instagram and is closing in on 700,000 on TikTok.
Her online comedy has regularly gone viral in recent years. A TikTok sketch she posted in May in which she, literally, walks a mile in her roommate’s shoes to develop an understanding of what it is to be a man earned more than eight million views.
But Slowikowska – a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Actors Conservatory who will turn 30 in October – has also developed a more conventional career in TV and film on both sides of the border.
In the U.S., she’s had recurring roles on FX’s What We Do in the Shadows and Netflix’s Tires. Her Canadian screen credits include the short-form CBC comedy series Homeschooled, the OutTV horror comedy Ezra and Chandler Levack’s 2022 coming-of-age film I Like Movies.
Saturday Night Live, which was created and is still run by Toronto-raised Lorne Michaels, regularly shakes up its cast and writer’s room in advance of new seasons. Last week, Celeste Yim – a Canadian who was with the show for five years and wrote many of the sketches that helped make cast member Bowen Yang into a star – announced that they were leaving.
“I hate when other people say this but it’s true that I was the first ever out trans person to be a writer for SNL,” Yim wrote. “I always felt honoured to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show.”
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While SNL leaned heavily on Canadian talent in its early decades – Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman and Mike Myers are among its famous Canuck alumni – this has been less the case in recent years.
Yang, who has been with SNL in some capacity since 2018, spent seven years of his childhood in Canada and recently revealed on fellow comedian Marc Maron’s podcast that he has dual American-Canadian citizenship. Before him, the last Canadian to be in the cast was the late Norm Macdonald, who left in 1998.
SNL airs on Global in Canada and returns for its new season live from New York on Oct. 4 at 11:30 p.m. ET.