Season 2 of FX’s “Adults”— which premiered in late August — depicts a group of five friends hanging out in their shared house in Queens. There’s the relatively sane Samir, holding the group together (Malik Elassal), the thwarted careerist Billie (Lucy Freyer), the agent-of-chaos diva Issa (Amita Rao), the relentlessly social dry wit Anton (Owen Thiele) … And then there’s Paul Baker, the most recent addition to the friend group, played by Jack Innanen. Paul Baker, always referred to by his first and last names, is a walking, talking sunbeam.
Congenitally optimistic without being saccharine, Paul Baker was, in Season 2, the nexus of a love triangle in which his character felt torn between his girlfriend, Rao’s Issa, and his husband, Thiele’s Anton. (It’s complicated.) Part of what fueled the ups and downs was the sense that Paul Baker is genially open to whatever life might throw at him — a personality type engineered to drive the acting-out Issa and the neurotic Anton to distraction. Innanen’s striking looks —featuring an instantly recognizable mustache he agonizes over potentially shaving — and street-style prowess have done much the same for “Adults” fans. In fact, the show shoots in Toronto, which happens to be where Innanen attended university.
After a childhood spent developing his chops as a YouTuber, Innanen dropped out of school to pursue acting in New York. He landed the part on “Adults” after racking up some 3 million followers on TikTok and appearing on “The Office Movers,” a comedy series on the Canadian channel Crave (the home of “Heated Rivalry”). Innanen’s still based in New York — where, right now, he’s shooting the second season of Dan Levy’s Netflix series “Big Mistakes.” He speaks with Variety about the “Adults” fandom, turning down a role in “Heated Rivalry” and the one moment from Season 2 that still makes him blush.
I’ve always had these two avenues I wanted to pursue. I’ve always really loved science — specifically physics and astronomy — and wanted to pursue that, and that felt like what I was supposed to do. And I was always fascinated with making YouTube videos, but just didn’t really consider that the path.
And then at the University of Toronto I took some film classes — oh my God, this is what I actually spend my time outside of class doing! It was a tough conversation to have with my parents, because that’s a pretty fat 180. Right now, I’m reading a lot of sci-fi to nurture that other half.
It taught me that you don’t have to be one thing. I felt some impostor syndrome, not having an education in theater or film, that I didn’t belong. Because I was really into movies or sketch comedy, I didn’t belong in physics.
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