NBC announced its newest Saturday Night Live (SNL) cast members on Tuesday, and one of them has ties to Toronto. Canadian comic Veronika Slowikowska, 29, will join the sketch comedy show’s 51st season this fall, along with four other new cast members (Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall and Kam Patterson), making Slowikowska the only Canadian and the only woman in this incoming group.
“dream come true ? see you Saturdays” she wrote in a recent Instagram post.
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Here’s everything you need to know about Slowikowska.
Where is Slowikowska from, and what is her connection to Toronto?
Slowikowska hails from Barrie, Ont., but graduated from Toronto’s Randolph College for the Performing Arts in 2015. The private career college near Bathurst and Bloor specializes in singing, dancing and acting (and has other notable alumni like actors Lisa Berry, Morgan Kohan and Paul Alexander Nolan), so perhaps her Toronto schooling helped with her craft!
After Randolph, Slowikowska graduated from Toronto’s Second City Conservatory program before completing a six-month Canadian Film Centre Actors Conservatory program in North York in 2019.
Although her Instagram page states she’s based out of New York and Toronto, she posts most of her sketches out of her New York apartment.
Where you’ve spotted her
After graduating from Randolph, Slowikowska began landing small TV roles, including a 2017 episode of Degrassi: Next Class. In 2018, she scored her first big break on the cult comedy What We Do in the Shadows, where she had a recurring role as Shanice.
After the pandemic hit, Slowikowska’s acting career (along with the rest of the industry) was put on hold for a bit. According to a recent Maclean’s article, in 2022, Slowikowska was working at Craig’s Cookies in downtown Toronto while building her viral sketch comedy content online. As it turns out, her surreal, oddball style of comedy resonates with the public! She soon amassed more than one million followers on Instagram and 700,000+ followers on TikTok, with 48.1 million likes.
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This year, Slowikowska won the 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance in a Children’s or Youth Program for her portrayal as Davey in Davey & Jonesie’s Locker, a flick about two teens who discover their locker is actually a portal to a Multiverse.
In the past decade, her other acting credits included Homeschooled, I Like Movies, EXmas, Baroness von Sketch Show, Poker Face, Murdoch Mysteries (she played Roberta Haycroft in Season 13), and a six-episode run as Kelly in the Netflix hit Tires.
We could definitely expect to see Slowikowska’s absurdist, off-beat type of comedy in SNL this fall!
Who else is joining SNL this fall?
Alongside Słowikowska, four other members have been added to the cast for this upcoming season. One notable addition is Ben Marshall — who spent several years on SNL as part of the “Please Don’t Destroy” trio, both as a performer and writer. Other cast additions include Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane and Kam Patterson.
Who is Veronika Slowikowska replacing?
Quite a few SNL cast members have confirmed their exits, including Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim, the latter of whom is leaving after only one season. Another surprise departure is Heidi Gardner (who was the longest-running female member of the recent cast) — though she hasn’t commented publicly yet, Variety and other outlets have reported on the departure. Marshall’s “Please Don’t Destroy” collaborator John Higgins is also leaving — the third member of the trio, Martin Herlihy, is remaining on SNL as a writer.
