Zelenskiy has been fixture on Ukrainian TV for years

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been one of the most recognizable figures in Ukraine long before he entered the presidential race on New Year’s Eve.

Generations of Ukrainians have watched Zelenskiy’s comic shows, series, and films for years, as he, along with his production company, Studio Kvartal 95, rose to astounding success.

In the first round of the election, held on March 31, Zelenskiy, who plays a teacher-turned-president in a series “Servant of the People,” had a strong showing. He got 30 percent of the vote among 39 candidates. In the runoff on April 21, he will face President Petro Poroshenko, who had 16 percent.

Zelenskiy’s career is a story of a self-made man, whose talent brought him fame, popularity, and wealth. While his professional life has been in the spotlight for years, not much is known about his personal life. Now that he may become Ukraine’s sixth president, many wonder what Zelenskiy is like when he is off the stage or a movie set.

Early years

The comic-turned-politician was born in Kryvyi Rih, a city of 630,000 people located about 400 kilometers southeast of Kyiv in Dnipro Oblast.

Zelenskiy was a regular kid. His father Oleksandr is a cybernetics and computer engineering professor and his mother Rymma is an engineer. The comic calls his parents the most important people in his life and says they fostered him to not tolerate lying.

In his school days, the future comic dreamed of becoming a diplomat. However, he eventually turned to law graduating from Kryvyi Rih Economic Institute of the Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University, where his father was a professor. But he didn’t pursue a legal career, as during the student years he caught a bug for comedy.

Zelenskiy joined the team “Zaporozhye – Krivoy Rog – Transit” that participated in KVN, a comedy competition that was launched in Soviet Russia in 1961 and is still popular in post-Soviet countries.

The KVN abbreviation stands in Russian for “The Club of Funny and Witty.” The game has seasons and stages and it brings together teams that perform mostly non-improvisational comedy performances in various formats and on various topics.

Each game has contests and a jury to rate the performances. One game can, for instance, include such contests as “Greeting” when teams introduce themselves to the audience, a theatrical round that is supposed to have a plot and dramaturgy, and an improvisation contest, when the jury asks questions and the teams are expected to come up with funny answers.

“Zaporozhye – Krivoy Rog – Transit” won the Major League of KVN held in Moscow in 1997. But Zelenskiy mostly played secondary roles there. Soon after that, along with some of the former team members, he created a new team called “95 Kvartal.”

Unlike in his previous team, Zelenskiy led “95 Kvartal” and played the main roles. A goofy guy with a famously husky voice impersonating celebrities, dancing and singing, he was the public’s favorite.

In one of the sketches, Zelenskiy played a “man born dancing.” The comic was dancing for four minutes straight, as he was talking to his teammate, who played a host interviewing Zelenskiy’s character. His dancing moves reflected his answers to the interviewer’s questions, or, on the contrary, contradicted them. “What is your nationality?” the host asked Zelenskiy. “Me?” he asks, as he starts doing Jewish traditional dance. He takes a pause, and replies “Russian.” The audience is laughing.

Zelenskiy’s team won Ukrainian KVN league in 2001 and collected a couple of other KVN awards. Although the achievements of “95 Kvartal” in the Major League in Moscow were not that impressive (their best result was semi-final), the KVN organization couldn’t miss a chance to keep Zelenskiy’s talent and offered him to become an editor for one of the KVN leagues.

But the offer was only for him, meaning he would have to disband his team.

“It was a hot button for me. What does it mean to disband friends?” the presidential candidate said in an interview to Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon published on Dec. 25, 2018.

Zelenskiy refused the offer and stuck to his team, and that was the beginning of the Studio Kvartal 95 the way Ukrainians know it today.
Today, almost all key actors on the Kvartal comedy troupe are the same people that performed with Zelenskiy in KVN nearly 20 years ago.

Zelenskiy often refers to his team as his family.

Entering TV

Zelenskiy’s team came up with a format that was new for Ukraine, a comedy show “Vecherniy Kvartal” (“Late Night Kvartal”) that focused on political and social satire. Zelenskiy was the front-man and one of the writers on the show.

Their first show aired in 2005 on one of the most-watched Ukrainian television channels, Inter. Although “Vecherniy Kvartal” was criticized by some for its unsophisticated humor, the mass audience loved it. The mix of hard-edged jokes about top officials and sketches about people’s everyday problems, like conflicts between wives and husbands, office parties and hangovers, won the show huge popularity.

Kvartal’s shows soon replaced the comedy shows produced in Russia, which at the time aired in Ukraine.

Riding the popularity wave, the one-show project has grown into a production company Studio Kvartal 95 that started producing more TV shows, series, feature movies, and animation.

In 2010, Zelenskiy took the job of the general producer of Inter. At the time, Inter belonged to Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister. He worked in the government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country after the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.

Inter was loyal to Yanukovych and his allies. Since then, the TV station has been the target of nationalist protesters many times for its allegedly pro-Russian stance. Zelenskiy’s cooperation with Inter as general producer ended in two years.

In 2012, the showman resigned providing vague reasons to the public. Much later, in his interview to Gordon in 2018, he said that he couldn’t stand working for Inter anymore and hinted that it was connected to the political situation in Ukraine.

Kvartal 95 left Inter with Zelenskiy. The same year they accepted an offer from another TV heavyweight 1+1, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who is now believed to be connected to Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign, which the candidate denies. For nearly seven years, 1+1 remains home to most of TV projects by Zelenskiy and Kvartal.

Growing

Studio Kvartal 95 continued to grow and produce new products, eventually turning into a humor industry mogul. It has been producing comedy sketch shows, animation series, a late night show. In 2015, the time came for a new project.

After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and unleashed a war in the country’s east in 2014, many Ukrainian teams that participated in KVN competitions at the time were confused: They wanted to continue their comedy careers, but performing in KVN in Russia was no longer acceptable.

Zelenskiy seized the opportunity and launched Liga Smekha (Laughter League), a Ukrainian version of KVN.

Liga Smekha became a platform for up-and-coming comics in Ukraine, as well as attracted teams from the Caucasus and Eastern European countries. Zelenskiy hosts the competition and, like for many of his projects, serves as the face of the show.

The company kept on producing movies and TV series: many of them used to be created in co-production with Russian companies except for their latest products, including the famous “Servant of the People” three-season series and feature film, where Zelenskiy plays a school teacher that becomes the president by accident.
Some of Zelenskiy’s studio’s films have been real hits in Ukraine. Their latest comedy “Me. You. He. She” (2018), focused on a married couple which seeks a divorce after 10 years together. The film earned over Hr 70 million and broke the country’s box office record for Ukrainian movies. Zelenskiy co-directed the film and played one of the main roles.

Family matters

Although social media is one of the drivers of Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign, he doesn’t post much about his personal life. Neither does he often speak about it.

His wife, Olena Zelenska, went to the same school he did, but the two didn’t speak until after graduation when they met in the street.
“I liked her, then fell in love deeply, irrevocably,” Zelenskiy said in the interview to Gordon.

Olena became one of the writers at Kvartal 95 and she still writes jokes for her husband’s performances. She also co-owns some of the companies in her husband’s comedy empire.

Zelenskiy and Olena got married after dating for eight years. They now have two children, 14-year-old daughter Oleksandra and six-year-old son Kyrylo.

The candidate says that his family didn’t support his decision to shift to politics. They were, in fact, strongly against it. According to Zelenskiy, his busy schedule had always left little time for family and a presidential race only worsened the situation.

“It’s my biggest problem,” Zelenskiy said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda news outlet published on Jan. 20. “But I hope I’m doing something good for their (children’s) future,” he added.

Zelenska said in a joint interview with her husband to television channel ICTV that she didn’t put much thought into what she would focus on as the first lady.

“I know that it’s a difficult role,” she said.

Lifestyle

Zelenskiy says that he starts his day with a morning workout. But he hasn’t always been a sports fan. The presidential candidate started a video blog Ze Kubiki (Ze Abs) in 2017 in order to challenge himself to work out regularly.

He says that he occasionally drinks wine and admits he’s “addicted” to coffee. He says he doesn’t do drugs.

According to Zelenskiy’s declaration of income and assets, he has a soft spot for pricey watches. He owns watches made by Breguet, Tag Heuer, Rolex, and Bovet. He also owns a house and several apartments in Ukraine, and a villa in Italy.

The presidential candidate uses a luxurious Range Rover for transportation. However, if he will be elected president, Zelenskiy says that he might give up his car and use a bicycle to commute to the Presidential Administration, just like his character does in “Servant of the People” series.