Early life
Bryk was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father is actor Greg Bryk, a prolific Canadian screen presence known for television work including Bitten and Frontier,3 and his mother is Danielle Nicholas Bryk.1 His older brother, Dempsey Bryk, is also an actor with a substantial television career.4 Growing up in a household where professional acting was a day-to-day reality gave Bryk direct insight into the industry from an early age; his father's experience also served as a frank counterweight, having warned him about the challenges of sustaining a career in the business.5
Bryk began his professional acting career in 2019, appearing in the crime thriller series Jett in a guest role.6
Career
Acting
Bryk's early television work includes a guest role as Slim in the Jett episode "Phoenix" (2019) and a recurring role as Billy Clanton across six episodes of the fourth season of Wynonna Earp (2020-2021), the supernatural Western series.6
His film work began in earnest in 2021. In addition to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, that year he appeared in the crime drama Crisis as David Reimann.6 He followed that with a role as Kyle in When You Finish Saving the World (2022), the feature directorial debut of Jesse Eisenberg, which also starred Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard.6
Bryk has continued to build a varied screen career alongside his directing work. In 2024 he appeared in Saturday Night, director Jason Reitman's acclaimed recreation of the chaotic first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975, playing a cast member named Carl.6 This marked his second feature collaboration with Reitman, who had also directed Ghostbusters: Afterlife. He also appeared in the dark comedy Friendship (2024).6
In 2026 he plays Michael, a senior architecture student and romantic interest, in Roommates, a Netflix college comedy.6 He also appears in Crash Land (2026), directed by his brother Dempsey Bryk, in which he plays Darby and also serves as a producer. The film, which also features Finn Wolfhard, premiered at SXSW on March 13, 2026, and received strong notices.7
Filmmaking
Bryk and Wolfhard's creative partnership developed from a chance meeting in Toronto's Kensington Market, where the two had a brief conversation about their shared interest in the comedy web series Jake and Amir.1 They did not reconnect until more than a year later, when they were both cast in Ghostbusters: Afterlife,5 and quickly discovered they had overlapping sensibilities and filmmaking ambitions.
Their first collaboration was the short film Night Shifts (2020), which Wolfhard directed and in which Bryk played the lead role of Billy.5 Bryk subsequently appeared in When You Finish Saving the World (2022), another project connected to Wolfhard's orbit.
Their most significant joint project to date is Hell of a Summer (2023), which the two co-wrote, co-directed, and produced, with both also taking acting roles (Bryk plays Bobby, Wolfhard plays Chris).2 The film is a comedy horror set at a summer camp in which counselors face gruesome fates, and reflects the horror-comedy genre both had been drawn to independently. According to Bryk, the project began roughly six years before its production, when he discovered that he and Wolfhard had been separately developing nearly identical horror-comedy screenplays. Hell of a Summer premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named second runner-up for the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness.8 It received a theatrical release on April 4, 2025.8
Bryk and Wolfhard have also co-hosted the film podcast Lackluster Video for the Headgum network since 2020, in which they discuss and dissect films they love alongside Jake and Amir of CollegeHumor.5
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021, directed by Jason Reitman), Bryk plays Zahk, a local teenager in Summerville, Oklahoma who works alongside Lucky Domingo at Spinners Roller Hop, a drive-in diner. Zahk is one of the cooks at the roller hop and appears in scenes where he jokes around with coworkers and mocks Trevor Spengler's awkward attempts to flirt with Lucky. It is a supporting comedic role with modest screen time, but the production was consequential for Bryk personally: his friendship with Finn Wolfhard, formed during the shoot, became the most significant creative relationship of his early career.
