A recognizable face across the big screen, small screen, stage, airwaves, comedy, emceeing, singing and writing, Jesse Reynolds has done it all. Flamboyant and playful, bubbly and raring to go, the iconic Canadian personality makes some profound revelations about his career decisions and his zest for living life king-size.
Ottawa-born Jesse Reynolds is an award-winning Canadian actor, emcee, comedian, author, broadcast journalist and former radio show host. However, for the colourful personality and Britney Spears fan, today’s fame and accolades stem from humble beginnings — and truckloads of perseverance.
Growing up in Kanata with three siblings who still remain very close despite their significant age gap, Reynolds credits his mom as the family’s backbone. “My mom bent over backwards to ensure we had a fulfilling childhood, despite having rheumatoid arthritis that caused her difficulty walking. Although she passed away a few years ago, she was a source of great strength and perseverance,” says Reynolds.
His early success in the entertainment industry is commendable, yet glamour wasn’t what drove him there. Brutally honest, Reynolds reveals that what motivated him to become famous and successful, was the desire to overcome his family’s financial struggles. “As a child, in my head, money was the solution to all problems,” he remarks.
While he is unabashedly gay, Reynolds claims that school bullies who teased him about ‘having a girl’s voice’ and being a ‘drama queen’ also pushed him to seek the spotlight. Before long, he realised he was actually good at it. One thing led to another and he went from winning a regional public speaking competition with a speech about Dracula to starring in numerous high-school plays and musicals, joining the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama and gaining early recognition for acting in the Canadian Improv Games and the Sears Ontario Drama Festival.
ABOVE: A young Jesse with his parents, Stephen and Donna Reynolds, at Sandbanks Provincial Park in 1990. (Photo: Jas Nasty) Jesse Reynolds at 14 years of age in the uOttawa production of Connections, a play about homeless, drug-addicted youth in 1999. (Photo: Jas Nasty) As Larry in The Boys in the Band with TotoToo Theatre in Ottawa in 2019. (Selfie)
He then went to Humber College in Toronto to study theatre and fulfil his childhood dream of becoming an actor. “However, I got kicked out after two years at Humber, because they felt I was “too commercial” to make it as an actor. But I still got my diploma, completing credits through other programs, and that experience only reinforced my decision to make it as an actor because I believed in myself and my potential to succeed against all odds,” notes Reynolds.
Returning to Ottawa, life had other plans for Reynolds, who was forced to work a few office jobs to make ends meet while auditioning on the side for roles in theatre, movies, TV shows, and commercials after connecting with his agent, Lisa Meuser, of Mensour Agency. Around the same time, he also began emceeing at nightclubs and events. In 2008, he won the People’s Choice Award from the Eastern Ontario Drama League for his role in Daniel MacIvor’s play The Soldier Dreams. Uninhibited and unassuming, in 2013, his drag queen talk show ‘Zero to Jesse’, which focused on the gay community in Ottawa, earned him the moniker ‘Ottawa’s Acid Tongue’ by Capital Xtra Magazine. It was also the first time Reynolds made the cover of a magazine, which he considers “an award of sorts”.
Sweet Taste Of Success
ABOVE: On stage at Yuk Yuk’s Ottawa. (RIGHT) Backstage at the Shaw Centre on New Year’s Eve, where Jesse performed with Tom Green and Kenny and Spenny as part of Yuk Yuk’s in 2020. Photo: Ashley Krawchenko
Reynolds’s first foothold into fame came in 2015, when he beat 260 other contestants to win JUMP!’s Greatest Gig city-wide talent search, joining Corus Entertainment as the new morning show co-host on Ottawa’s JUMP! 106.9, alongside Jenna Mosher. “I started doing stand-up comedy at Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa around 2014, after watching an old Johnny Carson interview, where the American TV host and comedian had said that anybody who wanted to break into the entertainment industry should start by doing stand-up, because producers and casting directors believe that stand-up comedians have potential to succeed on a larger stage given their one-on-one interaction with the audience,” says Reynolds. He continues, “That advice actually turned out to be gold, because Mark Dickie, the then general manager from JUMP!106.9 FM told me the reason I was picked was because seeing me do stand-up gave him the confidence that I could handle a bigger audience, owing to my ability to think on my feet. This, even though I’d only been doing stand-up for a few months before that,” he asserts.
ABOVE: In 2015, Jesse Reynolds won the talent search to become the new morning show co-host on Ottawa’s JUMP! 106.9.
Winning the talent search was also validation that Reynolds could turn the mockery of his ‘gay accent’ into the voice of a wildly popular radio host. ‘JUMP! Mornings with Jesse and Jenna’ lasted till 2018, when it was replaced with a US-syndicated program, much to the consternation of Ottawans who raged against the idea of Americans stealing jobs from hard-working Canadians. Unfazed, Reynolds started a podcast with his former co-host three weeks after the show ended. Jesse & Jenna’s Messy podcast debuted at #1 on Apple Canada’s Podcasting chart and was named ‘Ottawa’s Favourite Podcast’ by FACES Magazine in 2020 and 2021.
Reynolds also lent his voice to an animated series for the Canadian Tulip Festival in 2019. In the same year, during Pride Month, he co-hosted Queer Sphere Expo, Ottawa’s largest two-day LGBTQ+ trade show at Shaw Centre that showcased over 85 LGBTQ+ owned and operated brands and local performances. While the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the pandemic, Reynolds won the 2020 CBC Trailblazer Award for the expo. He considers this the most gratifying of all his awards because it represents his impact as a role model for Ottawa’s queer community, which has significantly shaped his life.
As an emcee, Reynolds has hosted Ottawa Bluesfest, Ottawa’s Capital Pride Festival, FAM Network Infinity Ball, SafePet Ottawa gala, CHEO Telethon and Ottawa Business Journal Awards, among other prominent events. A naturally funny people person, Jesse has also savoured growing success with stand-up comedy at Yuk Yuk’s venues in Ottawa and other cities. He won two FACES Magazine awards as Ottawa’s favourite comedian in 2019 and 2020, affirming his popularity with the capital’s crowd.
Lemons To Lemonade
While COVID sent the podcast into permanent hiatus in 2021, Reynolds continued making guest appearances on other prominent podcasts. Never one to brood over a setback, 2022 was a comeback year for Reynolds, marking his return to radio when Corus Entertainment offered him a position at Fresh 104.3 FM in Kingston as co-host of the ‘Fresh Mornings with Monica & Jesse’ show, alongside Monica Lapajne. That same year, Reynolds also got his big movie break with the release of Tubi Original Obsessed to Death. The role earned him international recognition, and he describes acting in it as “the most rewarding experience of my life”. He has also played smaller roles in other movies, including Road Trip Romance, The Jane Mysteries: Too Much to Lose, Willow’s Bend, Dirty Love, and Dead of Winter.
ABOVE: A video still of Jesse Reynolds as spin instructor Gage Iron in the TV movie thriller Obsessed to Death (2023). Photo: MarVista Entertainment
Given his varied experience in the entertainment industry, Reynolds was selected as an adjudicator for the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which handles public complaints and questions about broadcast programming in Canada. “For someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously, getting a perspective from the other side has been interesting. It dawned on me that maybe some of my stand-up jokes were unintentionally offensive,” laughs Reynolds.
In 2024, Fresh Mornings ended due to corporate downsizing, and once more, Reynolds faced the same uncertainty he had encountered multiple times before.
“Luckily, Corus Entertainment, which also operates Global News in Kingston, absorbed me as a video journalist and reporter. While writing news scripts and cutting videos was a complete departure from anything I’d previously done, I decided to treat it as a learning experience and transform it into yet another career path – this time in news media,” avers Reynolds.
Reynolds’ Memoirist Era
Around the same time that his radio show ended, Reynolds, fresh out of a complicated relationship, decided to channel his grief into a memoir, which he regards as an emotionally challenging yet rewarding experience.
Forbidden Fruit & Camo Boots: 2 boyfriends are better than none? (2026) is a queer relationship memoir about Reynolds’ real-life plunge into a relationship with a married military couple that blends grief, humour, passion and jealousy with emotional honesty and vulnerability.
“This is the first project that is 100 percent me – I wrote it, marketed it, promoted it. I released a companion pop song, “Sinner & a Soldier”, based on the book, that is on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, which I recorded with Kingston-based Dragonfly Studio. I am now working on an audiobook which I hope to release by late September this year. And I am trying to turn this into a screenplay as well,” Reynolds tells us.
ABOVE: Jesse Reynolds with his new book at Indigo Belleville. Photo: Jen Luther (RIGHT) The dust jacket for Two Husbands, One Boyfriend. Zero Rules.
Having always wanted to write a book, Reynolds, who is both self-deprecating and self-effacing in equal measure, decided his own love triangle was the right hook for the book, as well as an emotional outlet to process his breakup. Published by FriesenPress, the book is available at Coles, Indigo, Step Soup and Sandwich (Kingston, Ontario), Books on Main (Bath, Ontario), as well as on Amazon and his website. In the US, the book is available at Barnes & Noble and The Strand in New York.
Reynolds also sells his books at various stand-up venues where he continues to perform, including Yuk Yuk’s, Daft Brewing in Kingston and Sans-Souci in Belleville.
Staying True To Yourself
Reynolds’ mentor is his grade 10 drama teacher, Greg Wysinski, who taught him to be himself and trust his own instincts. He also played an instrumental role in Reynolds’ acting career, having written a letter of recommendation for him to Humber College, noting the promise Reynolds showed at that young age in creativity, talent, improvisation, and originality. Proud of all he’s achieved juggling a balancing act of a career, Reynolds says acting is the role closest to his heart because everything else he has done has been a means to ultimately achieving that end – becoming an acclaimed actor.
“I am acting all the time, in every role I play, be it comedy, radio, reporting or emceeing. I know I’m no Meryl Streep, but as long as I’ve leaned into my natural talent of just being myself, I’ve achieved success. I’m very self-aware and I’ve built a life moving between spaces that don’t usually overlap. Each role comes with its own expectations, but I’ve learned how to navigate them without losing the thread of who I am… Every role is an extension of my personality,” he notes.
ABOVE: Jesse during a promo taping for the radio show Fresh Mornings with Monica and Jesse. Photo: Corus Entertainment
Connecting with people and touching lives is the common thread that makes it all worthwhile for Reynolds. He shares an anecdote. “When I was co-hosting Fresh Mornings with Monica & Jesse, one day a dad called in and asked to speak to me. My first thought was that he probably had a problem with something I had said on air, because I am openly gay. Instead, to my utter surprise, he said he wanted to thank me because his 14-year-old son had just come out of the closet to him, having gained the confidence from listening to my show on their daily commute. That was a really moving moment for me because I was once that 14-year-old kid. It also reaffirmed the impact I was having on people’s lives.”
Reynolds has also been a positive influence as a volunteer on the Patient and Family Advisory Committee at Bruyère Hospital, since his mother was admitted there in 2020. Since relocating to Kingston, he hasn’t been active on the panel, but during the pandemic he acted as a liaison between patients, their families and medical teams to ensure patients received the best possible care during their final days.
While Reynolds is down-to-earth and modest about his achievements, one of the biggest challenges he has faced is an entertainment industry that is still at a relatively nascent stage compared to the US, making it financially unviable for Canadian actors to pursue the profession full-time. “You have to have your finger in many pies to make an actual living, because there is no security blanket in this profession. Add to that a lot of perseverance because you are only as good as your next show, so you have to keep pushing to land something new each time a project wraps up. Moreover, I think regular Canadians don’t take this profession seriously – I still get asked to this day what my ‘real’ job is, even after all I’ve accomplished,” Reynolds discloses.
That said, Reynolds is gratified to be a representative of Ottawa, which he believes is a growing multicultural destination. “There was a time when I couldn’t wait to leave Ottawa because I didn’t think I could make it big in the entertainment industry there. But things have changed. Ottawa has become so much more accepting and diverse in the last few years in terms of entertainment,” observes Reynolds. He adds, “Besides, being a Libra, balance is very important for me, and Ottawa has the perfect balance of city life and natural surroundings. Living in Kingston with my canine partner-in-crime, Reggie, has taught me to view the nation’s capital from a different perspective, and I now miss the big city life. Ottawa will always be home.”
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Header image: Kaytlyn Poberznick
Full Article: https://www.ottawalife.com/article/ottawas-jesse-reynolds-is-unapologetically-authentic-endlessly-entertaining/
