If there’s one thing Ivy Wolk will do, it’s cause a stir. The 20-year-old comedian and actress is a little terror, lobbing radioactive jokes onto the internet and watching them explode. Then she might outwit her haters, spiral into self-loathing, or a combination of both. Wolk has been a live-wire internet personality since she was 14, when she first started posting comedic videos under the TikTok account @fathoodbitch. (She’s white and from L.A.) Since then, she has enjoyed a long online career as a gonzo cultural commenter and diarist. Wolk has an undeniable way with words. So with each failed cancellation attempt — even if what she has said is indefensible — her presence metastasizes. “You’re never gonna be able to wash your hands of me,” she tells me, smirking, at the New York City comedy venue the Stand. “Like Morrissey said, ‘The more you ignore me, the closer I get.’”
Wolk speaks with adult severity in a babyish tone, like a frighteningly precocious kindergartner already weary of the world. She has blunt, slightly uneven bangs that she hacks herself and dark eyebrows that she has gotten death threats over. “I think, as a woman, it’s important to not shut up if people are telling you to shut up; be ugly if people are telling you you’re ugly,” she notes, demonstrating remarkable self-conviction for someone who hasn’t even reached legal drinking age. Her ever-expanding list of creative inspirations includes Andy Kaufman, Trisha Paytas, Three 6 Mafia, and, of course, Lena Dunham, whose work has endured bitter scrutiny only to later be reevaluated as the triumph of a generation.
Now Wolk is moving from your phone screen to the silver screen. Sean Baker cast her in his Palme d’Or–winning stripper comedy, Anora, off her singular internet presence, an experience she calls “the greatest of my life.” She plays Crystal, a stoner candy-shop worker and friend of high-rolling Russian twerp Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). She was a highlight on FX’s English Teacher as the bossy, self-interested BFF to a sympathy-milking Romy Mars. But her breakout role actually came in 2020 when she appeared on Josh Thomas’s family comedy about a man who becomes the guardian of his autistic half-sister. Up next, she’ll be featured in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Eugene Kotlyarenko’s The Code, and Jonah Hill’s upcoming A24 movie, Outcome.
How are you celebrating the release of Anora?
I feel like I’m all celebrated out. After this, I’m going to the grocery store and Walgreens and getting my prescriptions and paper towels. I’ll probably see the movie again with friends in due time. I read the Letterboxd reviews every day as they come in.
I checked, and you’re the first two reviews on the page.
I am? Oh my God.
You were cast in the movie after DM-ing Sean Baker a question you didn’t get to ask at a Red Rocket screening and Q&A. What was that experience like?
He was like, “You’re funny as fuck, and your internet presence is very strange. Send me something of yours.” Just knowing Sean, and knowing, like, he’s in my camp forever, is surreal. He’s always been one of my favorite filmmakers. Tangerine is one of my favorite movies of all time.
The process was very collaborative. Usually, I play distinct character roles that are, like, young, brazen, boisterous women who follow their own codes in a way that sparks chaos for other people. So this was another one of those. I think eventually I can transition into being, like, a leading lady, but it would need a lot of finesse and a lot of support.
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You wore a dark, vampy Elena Velez gown to the Anora premiere. It felt a little different for you. How have you been thinking about your red-carpet style?
I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, but that dress was custom-made. I was looking for inspiration from my girls — red-carpet pictures with Sandra Bernhard and Amy Winehouse. Courtney Love is such an important person to me. I saw this dress that she wore to the 1999 Golden Globes and was like, Oh, I’d look so good in this. Elena made her version.
How would you describe your general fashion sensibility?
On an average day, I’m wearing something like this: a Supreme sweater, Ben Davis Gorilla Cut Pants, and then these Docs. I like Turtle from Entourage. As I’m getting older, I’m experimenting with how I look onstage. So I like to dress a little sexier. I love wearing vintage Gunne Sax. I love a modern Jessica McClintock dress. I love Betsey Johnson, Vivienne Westwood.
Your bangs are one of your most recognizable features. When did they come into play?
I’ve had bangs pretty much my whole life on and off. I hate the way they look when they grow out, and I hate not being able to see behind my hair. It gives me sensory overwhelm. I like to show off the unibrow because it’s something people have reacted really violently to; I’ve literally had death threats over this. The fact that I have leaned into these things is part of why I’ve existed in people’s memories for so long. The look is so distinct, and the voice is so distinct, and the humor is so distinct, and what you’re gonna get from me is so distinct.
What was your upbringing like? Did you always want to act?
I always wanted to be an actress. I was very sick and mentally ill as a child. I was always loud and clownish, but, also, I hated myself for it and felt oftentimes like I was more so being laughed at than laughed with. But I was like, If people are laughing, then I’ve been useful in some way. I was into comedy from a really young age, and I always knew that I was a star because I felt so fucking weird, so unable to blend in. There was always something buzzing inside of me that I knew I could make the reason that people will never look away from me.
What do your parents do?
My mother just graduated college with a degree in landscape architecture, and my dad is the censor on the Jimmy Kimmel show. I was, like, an industry baby. So at a very early age, I was super-cognizant of the idea of celebrity. I always knew that the people on the TV and in the movies were fake.
@subwaytakes Episode 147: Just take it 💪 feat Ivy Wolk (Banned) 🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋 Hosted by @KAREEM RAHMA Shot by @Anthony DiMieri @Willem Holzer Edited by @Tyler Christie Production coordinator @Ramy #nyc #newyorkcity #podcast #subway #hottakes #interview #selfhelp #motivational #ivywolk
♬ original sound - Subway Takes
You moved to Brooklyn from L.A. a year ago. What’s your schedule like usually?
I usually work at nights for comedy and stuff and then during the day, I do my computer side hustles. The least-tiring part of my life is comedy. It’s fun, at times frustrating, really masochistic. I love it so much. But it’s so vulnerable to stand in front of people and expect a certain reaction and then when you don’t get that reaction, you just have to keep doing it. You feel like you’ve articulated your own thoughts and feelings so well in a way that makes sense to you. And you’re looking at other people not connecting the dots.
Isn’t that also what you subject yourself to online?
Everything I do is very publicly masochistic and self-flagellating, and I don’t know how to behave any other way. If I wasn’t doing stand-up, or an actress, I would find a way to take that and apply it to a human relationship. But I’ve always been able to find something funny out of what upsets me. I run a show with my friend Nick Viagas called Struggle Bus. The comics and us, the hosts, bring eight minutes of new material about the darkest things that have ever happened to us. You’re gonna talk about getting raped when you’re 15 for the first time ever onstage and see if these people can laugh at it. And then a panel of me, Nick, and a social worker interview each comic after they perform. At the end, one of the comics wins the title of Worst Life.
So if the audience laughs, do you feel understood?
Yeah. Because the comic’s goal is always to make it funny. I was tired of watching comics dumb themselves down onstage and do Zeitgeist-y and basic, observational bullshit. This is a room where it might be the first time someone has parsed their shit in front of other people.
Would you be dissatisfied if you told a serious story and people didn’t laugh?
Yeah, because I would always make it funny.
Do you usually make yourself the butt of your own joke? I’m thinking about your tweet “I was the only girl at the Diddy party they all said no to.”
That’s such a funny tweet, and they made me take it down. The internet was ablaze by it. There were so many quote-tweets with 30,000 likes each that were like, “This bitch is disgusting.” I am the butt of my own joke because I’m a person with a lot of shame and deep self-hatred. I’m not ever going to pretend like I’m on the other side of that. I’m deeply honest.
Do you feel the need to clean up your act as you professionalize? Has management ever threatened to yank your phone away?
People have threatened to yank my phone away since I fucking got a phone. But it’s like, I smoke cigarettes and run my mouth, and that’s kind of all I have. Maybe the internet is something I’ll grow out of. But for the past seven years of my life, this has just been who I am and how I present on the internet. I like that I have this kind of performance-art LiveJournal documentation of myself over the years. A lot of my accounts have been deleted or banned, but they exist in people’s memories. People still remember me talking about a crush I had in eighth grade. That’s really cool.
I imagine it’s also highly exposing to have your archive out there — all these controversies that can’t be completely erased.
It is very exposing. But I don’t know any other way to behave. I own up to all of it and try not to live my life with any sort of regrets. And if you’re not willing to look at a tweet that somebody did when they were 15 and be like, Okay, they were 15, I don’t care. You’re a very binary person, and that’s uninteresting to me.
How does it feel to be getting more famous, not just as a comedian and internet personality but as an actor someone’s mom may see onscreen?
It’s cool. I’ve built a really great résumé, and everything I’ve been in I can defend. I’ve been a part of things that are weird and experimental. I’ve also done bigger projects like English Teacher and Jonah Hill’s A24 movie. Initially, I was only supposed to be in very little of it and then Jonah and his co-writer, Ezra, and his producing partner Matt just kept adding me into things.
You said you want to be in a movie in which you’re “fucking gross. Like, fugly, sweaty, nasty, fucking it out.” Do you have a dream director for that?
Me. I’ve written so many star vehicles for myself. I would love to be a Cronenberg girl. I feel like my life is sort of a chronic, broken horror. I love Lena Dunham because she really understands women and we’re very similar people with our bodies and voices being so penalized. I feel she could really shepherd me. And then Todd Solondz is king of the freaks. John Waters, another king of the freaks. I would do anything to be in front of their lens.