Jack Innanen on Adults Season 2 and His Regretted Clip — SkimNews
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- Jack Innanen plays Paul Baker on FX's 'Adults' Season 2, which premiered in late August and centers a love triangle between his character, Issa (Amita Rao), and Anton (Owen Thiele).
- Innanen was studying astrophysics at the University of Toronto before switching to acting after taking film classes, and built roughly 3 million TikTok followers before landing the role; he also appeared on Crave's 'The Office Movers.'
- 'Adults' creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw originally wrote Paul Baker as a Colorado 'fuckboy' but rewrote him as Canadian after determining that 'a sweetness element that the Canadian aspect brought in.'
- Innanen turned down a role in 'Heated Rivalry' due to scheduling and is currently in New York shooting Season 2 of Dan Levy's Netflix series 'Big Mistakes.'
- For Season 2's childhood-clips segment, Innanen submitted a teenage YouTube video about seeing porn for the first time — a choice he now regrets, noting that the other four castmates 'sent in tame stuff.'
- Innanen pushed back on queerbaiting critiques, arguing Paul Baker is 'pretty fluid to the core' and that the love triangle 'was so accepted and natural and true to the character,' and said fans credit the role with helping them discover their own fluidity.
- Street-style photos of Innanen outside the McNally Jackson bookstore — including one of him carrying an ostentatiously empty Loewe bag ('I've got a couple of granola bars') — have cemented his heartthrob status, fueled by his instantly recognizable mustache.
Why it matters: Innanen's path — astrophysics dropout at University of Toronto to roughly 3 million TikTok followers to a buzzy FX role and a Netflix regular gig — illustrates the social-media-native route now anchoring cable hits. His public rebuttal of queerbaiting critiques around the sexually fluid Paul Baker also positions him as an active voice on queer representation, with showrunners crediting his portrayal with viewers discovering their own fluidity.
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