Meet Denise, heaven’s bathrobe-clad receptionist, on TikTok

Have you imagined what heaven is like? If not, here is Denise, heaven’s receptionist, giving us all a glimpse of the afterlife through her videos. If you are yet to recognise her, you can find her on TikTok where she is busy making people laugh and providing comfort as they process the loss of their loved ones. Let’s take a look at who she is. From Miss New York to heaven’s receptionist She is a gum-chewing, white bathrobe-wearing assistant who greets new arrivals in heaven. She may remind you of the receptionists you have met, but the difference is that her office is heaven. The character, Denise, created by Taryn Delanie Smith has grabbed eyeballs on TikTok and for all the right reasons. Smith, who was crowned Miss New York in 2022, got the idea one day when she was in the shower. “I was standing there thinking, ‘If I die in a chicken suit, then I have to wear the chicken suit forever.’ Can you imagine a ghost coming to you in a chicken suit?” 26-year-old Smith told NPR. “And I just couldn’t stop giggling.”

And that is how Denise was born whose witty videos have garnered Smith 1.2 million followers on TikTok in two years of posting.

According to Insider, Smith ad-libs her videos with no script while using her experience of working at a call center years ago.

As per NPR, Denise’s videos have been viewed more than 37 million times on TikTok and at least 22 million times on other social media platforms. ‘Ra-who?’ In one of her videos, Denise, with her hair tied in a towel and wearing a pink razor as a phone headset, gets a call where someone asks if mystic Russian monk Grigory Efimovich Rasputin got into heaven. To this, the heaven’s receptionist asks: “Ra, who?” With her fingers clacking on the keyboard, she goes on to say that she does not even have to look it up. “He is not here”. Denise is also not interested in reading the long emails of William Shakespeare, who has been in heaven forever. “I’m not reading all that,” she tells another receptionist. “It’s like eight pages long.” In another clip, she takes a sip of her tea and recoils. “Who turned my tea into wine,” she says, looking around. “This was water 20 minutes ago. It’s not funny.” This playfulness is visible in most of Smith’s videos. She also addresses important topics through humour and sincerity, without getting preachy.

In a video, Denise denies an Angel Premium Plus package to a woman who rejected her gay son, reported The Washington Post. “Right, so do you remember, when you said all those things to your son Ricky when he came out to you? Yeah, right. So, we didn’t like that. Yeah. Yeah. You didn’t earn any points up here.”

Coping with grief A user once asked if Denise could welcome their late mother Geraldine in the afterlife. As per Insider, Smith obliged and posted a video a few days later where she can be heard, saying: “We’ve been waiting for you. You are so loved. I’m already getting prayer mail for you.” Since then, Denise has been flooded with requests from TikTok users to make a video greeting their lost loved ones. Another user asked Denise: “Could u do one welcoming my baby Olivia? I lost her two years ago but I know she’s with my dad and grandpa but I miss her so much.” In the video, Denise halted her office chitchat to welcome Olivia, tenderly saying “she’s beautiful,” “so small,” and “so sweet”. Smith told Insider that she takes 20 to 30 minutes to record her own sketches, but the more personal ones “take a super long time” as she understands how important they are. “Sometimes those can take me over an hour to create, just because I want it to be good and I want it to be special,” she said.

After a point, it becomes difficult to talk about our grief with our friends and family but we still need the human connection to cope with the void left by a loved one’s death. As Megan Devine, a psychotherapist who studies grief and is the author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK, told NPR, Denise is “speaking to the most human need: the need for connection”. Smith told NPR she receives sometimes “hundreds” of emails and comments every week asking her to include certain people in her videos. “The only reason I do this is because of the collaborative nature of it. As long as we’re still doing this together as a team, then I’m here for it.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .