From playing a sex-crazed dentist, to hero of the Ukranians

Electing TV jokers to hight office has not always worked out. But in Ukraine – and across the world – Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being hailed as a hero for he defiant stance agains the Russian invaders… and he started out as a comedian.

He first started performing with a local KVN group in Kyiv, which stands for Klub Vesyólykh i Nakhódchivykh, or Club of the Funny and Inventive.

The KVN format mixes improvised sketches and games requiring witty answers to questions, panel-show style.  It started as a the TV show called An Evening of Funny Questions in 1961, but Soviet censors closed it down.  However it was revived in the Perestroika era and still airs today.

The TV show inspired people to play the games in real life, and local teams sprang up ami  the former Soviet states and across Russian expatriate communities. It’s said that more than 40,000 people take part in  3,000 regularly competing teams in more than 100 cities .

Zelenskyy took part in a united Ukrainian team which won the KVN Major League in 1997. The team transformed into the comedy outfit Kvartal 95,  were so successful they could tour  post-Soviet states.

In 2003, Kvartal 95 started producing comedy shows for the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, and two years later switched channel Inter, one of the nation’s biggest broadcasters

In 2008, Zelenskyy starred in a Russian-Ukrainian film called Love In The Big City, a romcom set in New York. He played a dentist called Igor who lived a life of hedonism with his two pals, until a mysterious stranger casts a spell which robs them of the ability to have sex until they reject promiscuity and find love.  Here’s a trailer

It spawned two sequels, the first of which was banned in Ukraine before he came to power as part of a clampdown on allowing Russian culture into the country – a policy he spoke out against

Other film roles, usually in the Russian language, included Office Romance, Our Time  and 8 First Dates, which was named the Best Russian Comedy of 2013. And he played Napoleon in Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon in 2012 – a film that also featured an appearance by Jean-Claude Van Damme.

He even voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukraine release of the British family comedy, as Hugh Bonneville was delighted to learn:

Until today I had no idea who provided the voice of @paddingtonbear in Ukraine. Speaking for myself, thank you, President Zelenskiy. #PaddingtonBear https://t.co/5VaMi201Fs

— Hugh Bonneville 🇺🇦 (@hughbon) February 27, 2022

In 2018, Zelenskyy  created and produced a TV satire called Servant of the People, which has been likened to a cross between Monty Python and Yes Minister.  Zelenskyy played Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko. a high-school history teacher who became president of Ukraine after a viral video showed him ranting against government.

A political party also called Servant of the People was registered with the Ministry of Justice that same year and, in a case of life imitating art,  Zelenskyy  led a successful,  almost entirely virtual campaign to unseat  President Petro Poroshenko.

In April 2019 that happened and Zelenskyy became president, But one of his  campaign promises was that he would serve only one term in office, five years in Ukraine.

Published: 27 Feb 2022