Before Taryn Delanie Smith was crowned Miss New York in 2022, she worked at a call center. At one point, she said, she was only pretending to take calls.
“I was actually making these little videos at my desk or on my way to work,” she said.
Ms. Smith, 28, is best known for her TikToks as Denise, a receptionist in heaven with a New York accent. Dressed in a robe and a towel head wrap, she welcomes newcomers and fields calls from heaven hopefuls through her headset microphone (a pink razor). In one video, Denise is drinking holy water at the Saints Lounge with Princess Diana and Whitney Houston. In another, she responds to viewers who want her to welcome their loved ones who have died.
She is a self-described “reigning chaos goblin” whose videos err on the side of comedy. Now with more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok, she creates videos full time and is a co-host of “Influenced,” a talk show on Amazon.
“I’ve never felt safer and more protected than by New Yorkers,” said Ms. Smith, who is from Seattle. “And so that is sort of what Denise embodies to me.”
Sundays, Ms. Smith said, are an anchor for her and her husband, Alec Castillo, whom she describes as a “big tatted-up dude who loves to cook.” They live with their “city cow,” a Great Dane named Bruce, in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.