“Canadian comedy is some of the best in the world”: Comedian Vic Michaelis wants to be a hometown kid

As the host of Dropout TV’s Very Important People, Toronto-raised improv comedian Vic Michaelis has interviewed sentient rocks, a slug, a demonic nun, a caveman and more. Each subject is played by a fellow comic who has been blindfolded and given a surprise makeover, then challenged to develop a character on the spot. It’s a suitably wacky premise for the network, which was rescued from the ashes of CollegeHumor by CEO and showrunner Sam Reich in 2020 and has since become a cult favourite of the streaming age for its twisted takes on game show formats.

Now, Michaelis is everywhere. Along with a troupe of fellow performers, they sold out Meridian Hall this past weekend for Just for Laughs; Very Important People has generated Emmy buzz; and Michaelis will appear in the upcoming Peacock original series Ponies alongside Emilia Clarke. We caught up with them to talk about falling in love with Second City, flunking out of the University of Toronto Scarborough and their failed bid to be a CN Tower EdgeWalk guide.

You’re working in LA these days, but you grew up in Toronto. Tell us about your history here—we want to claim you so bad. Please do! I moved to Canada from Illinois when I was 15, in 2008. It was me, my dad, my brother and my sister. First we lived in Kleinburg and later in Aurora. The plan was to be here for two years, but then my dad fell in love with my stepmother. It was a sweeping, epic romance that would make for a good movie, and the CBC should produce it. What was supposed to be only two years ended up being the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. I’m in love with Toronto. I consider it home, and this is my petition for you to consider me a hometown kid.

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Petition very much accepted. You went to university here too, right? Yes, at U of T Scarborough. I couldn’t tell you what I studied, though. I was there for a tight 18 months, and I went to maybe two classes. I met a bunch of people in the fashion world and got swept away with them. I started doing commercials, and as soon as I realized I could make money from acting, I said, “This is what I want to do forever.”

When did you first realize you loved improv comedy? I fell in love with it over and over again. By the time I got to U of T, I had already spent so much time watching shows at Second City. I went to an IB high school, and we had to write a big paper in order to graduate. I barely graduated. I wrote mine on how 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte influenced improv, and it was a thinly veiled excuse to see Second City shows over and over again. Watching the way that they work really influenced my comedic sensibility. I think Canadian comedy is some of the best in the world—look how many Canadian comics make it big relative to our population. Then, at U of T, I had a short-form group for a bit. I found it a great way to meet people on campus, so I kept it up when I moved to Vancouver. By the time I got to LA and was trying to become a “serious actor,” I was head over heels in love with improv.

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Why did you leave us for Vancouver? I failed out of university and then applied for a job I wanted so badly: tour guide at the CN Tower EdgeWalk. This was back when it first opened. It was the most intensive audition process I had ever been through—in the last round, I had to take a cognitive abilities test. I guess they didn’t want you freaking out on top of the building. I scored so low that I was testing at the level of people who have moderate brain injuries. I have learning disabilities, and I was in special ed for the last two years of high school. I had come up with all these workarounds for them, but there was no hiding them on the test. They were like, “You need help.” So I found this school in Vancouver, Eaton Arrowsmith, that specializes in teaching people with severe learning disabilities and went there for a year. It changed my life.

How did you get involved with Dropout? It started back in 2019, when they were still CollegeHumor. They were doing more scripted, sketch-style shows back then, and I’d come in as a freelancer to act on them. Then, in 2020, CollegeHumor went under and rebranded as Dropout. I got a cold email a year later to do an episode of Make Some Noise with Jacob Wysocki and Zac Oyama. I thought it was just a one-off thing, but luckily Sam Reich heard that I had been watching a lot of Survivor during lockdown, so he asked me to do a four-part episode of Game Changer modelled after the show. Right place, right time—and it paid my rent!

What was your day job? I did a lot of brand ambassador work: handing out samples, posing for pictures, things like that. You know, the really artistically gratifying stuff. Jobs like that make you a better performer because they give you real life experience to draw from. I got to meet so many people as I represented so many new products launched by so many billionaires. What’s life about if not shaking hands with the people who are single-handedly destroying the planet? I hate them. If you’re a billionaire, I hate you. I’m really sorry.

One of your castmates, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is known for his anti-billionaire tirades. I see it’s rubbing off on you. A nice thing about Dropout is that it’s a collective that tends to attract people with certain sensibilities. We’re in good company with a lot of our feelings on moral issues like that.

So, essentially, a leftist cabal. Yeah, we’re going to end up listed as a terrorist organization in the US, and you started it. Congratulations, Toronto Life. Oh, man, I can’t talk about this. I’ve got to get back across the border.

Are you a Canadian citizen? No, I’m a permanent resident. I had the opportunity to get my citizenship before I moved back to the US, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish filling out the paperwork, and then it was too late. But I’m up here a ton, going back and forth between Toronto and Vancouver. I love Vancouver, but Toronto is home. Unless you’re reading this from Vancouver, in which case, I love Vancouver and Vancouver is home. Don’t listen to what I said earlier.

I see how it is. How did you come up with the idea for your show, Very Important People? Sam Reich had a show called Hello, My Name Is, which was hosted by Pat Cassels. Josh Ruben would get in different hair and makeup for each episode, which were only five to seven minutes long. That show was a huge inspiration for my generation of Dropout performers. Sam wanted to reboot it, so he sent me an email asking if I wanted to host it. At that point, I’d only done the Survivor episodes and two Make Some Noise episodes that hadn’t come out yet. So of course I said yes, and he gave me a ton of creative freedom. My god, the amount of trust this man had in me—I will never not give him a kidney if he asks. It literally changed my life.

There was some Emmy buzz around the last season, but it didn’t come to pass. Still going for it? We’re knocking on the door, but they’re not answering. They say they’re not home, but we see them peeking through the blinds. One of these days, they’re going to have to nominate Dropout for something, and they can’t keep ignoring the Very Important People makeup department for much longer.

You’ve now sold out Meridian Hall for a live improv show along with four of your castmates. How do you keep your cool when making stuff up in front of thousands of people? There’s a platitude that nerves translate into excitement, and while that’s not at all helpful to people who are feeling nervous, it does happen eventually. I don’t get nervous being in front of people anymore. For shows like this, with all the energy feedback in the room, it’s pure excitement.

How do you think on your feet with no script to fall back on?  I guess that’s it—with a script, there’s a right and a wrong. With this, there isn’t. We’re building the thing entirely by ourselves. But we’re not completely winging it: we’ve played a lot of improv games and practised a lot of the moments over and over again. There’s years of practice behind us, even if our words are made up on the spot. So the mechanics really aren’t that different between a show with five people in the audience and one with 2,000.

What advice would you give to young improv comics hoping to go big? Get as much stage time as possible, take big swings and be bad. The more you fail on stage—do big things, get no laughs, start to sweat—the less nervous you get. Because afterward, it’s like, Okay, I failed in front of 45 people, and I’m still alive. I can learn from it. Here’s what worked and what didn’t, and here’s what I should have done. At first, that reflection will happen on the drive home. Then it’ll happen a few minutes after the mistake. Then it’ll happen right after. That just means you’re getting closer and closer to making it happen in real time.

What’s next for you? Could there be a feature film in the works? Are you trying to get me fired? I thought we were friends! Seriously, though, I have no idea. I’m pretty in my lane. I’ve got a TV show coming out soon called Ponies. It’s very fun. I was in Budapest for five and a half months for it, working on my Hungarian. Szia, sziasztok. There you go. That one’s free.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.