Ask Seneca graduate Isabel Kanaan when she realized she was funny, the Filipino-Canadian comedian and film and theatre actor will show you how to deliver a punchline.

“I still don’t think I’m funny,” she said.

Ms. Kanaan, who graduated from the Acting for Camera & Voice diploma program, makes a living making people laugh on stage, on television and on social media. 

She has been a member of CBC’s sketch comedy show Air Farce, Second City’s House Ensemble and Educational Company and the Canadian sketch troupe, the Sketchersons, performing on their weekly show Sunday Night Live.

Most recently, Ms. Kanaan co-created, wrote and starred in Abroad, a 12-part English-Tagalog comedy series on OMNI Television. The show is based on her TikTok videos about being an immigrant in Canada.

“I love how the show has resonated with people,” said Ms. Kanaan, one of the RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award winners in 2018. “The audience would find a way to contact me on social media or through OMNI, and we got great feedback.”

Isabel Kanaan stars in Abroad, a comedy series on OMNI. (Photo: submitted)

Abroad features characters that are based on Ms. Kanaan’s family, who are also involved in producing her TikTok videos.

“They are all characters in real life,” she said. “There’s a recurring character on the show that I call the Passive-Aggressive Mom, and it’s basically a combination of my mom and my aunt. They just have this overdramatic way of picking on what you say in the wrong way.”

Even though she doesn’t think she’s funny, Ms. Kanaan says her family thinks they are funny.

“I think I’m just really good at finding what’s funny and putting that on paper and in acting,” she said. “My professors at Seneca were the first to tell me that I could find the comedy in everything.”

Seneca, Ms. Kanaan adds, prepared her for a career in comedy.

“Seneca really did such a good job in setting me up for the industry,” she said. “We had a collaborative experience and graduated with everything we needed for the next step.”

For example, when Ms. Kanaan realized people didn’t know how to cast her as an actor, she started writing and creating roles for herself.

“In my career as an actor, I would get a lot of Spanish or Indian roles, and I felt wrong auditioning for them,” she said. “I decided that if I’m going to act in something, I want to showcase what Filipinos are — who we are.”

Writing has also become a “creative relief” for Ms. Kanaan, who puts pen to paper for about six hours a day.

“People think comedy is something I do on the side, but it’s not,” she said. “It’s a full-time job.”