Nurse John’s rise to internet fame started with a mental breakdown.
Before the Bulacan-born comedian, whose real name is John Dela Cruz, conquered TikTok with his overworked, underpaid, and undervalued alter ego Nurse John, he was living that reality himself as a frontliner in Montreal, Canada at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What stuck out to me was bagging patients and bringing them to the morgue,” Dela Cruz told Rolling Stone Philippines. Despite our conversation veering into the somber side of healthcare, Dela Cruz punctuated all talk about sickness with a joke and a laugh. “I became numb to death… but you have to move on to the next patient. It was like, ‘Sorry, you’re dying. Anyway, I’m just gonna go to the next room because they need my help.’”
It was no wonder then that Dela Cruz began to struggle under the weight of caring for so many patients against a then-unknown virus. “I’d go to the bathroom and cry; I’d use up all the tissue paper,” he recalled. “But I couldn’t cry too loud because I didn’t want anyone seeing me so vulnerable. I’d just wipe the tears away and get back to my shift.”
It was during one of these breakdowns that Dela Cruz stitched a video of himself showing off his registered nurse ID in response to a TikTok prompt, “Name a job where the amount of work and the amount of pay do not match.”
Dela Cruz posted his TikTok on a whim (a “butt dial,” as he’s joked in previous interviews), but it quickly went viral on the app. It now has roughly 1.6 million views, with over 4,000 comments from people either expressing their disbelief at nurses being underpaid or commiserating with Dela Cruz’s plight.
Since then, he has quickly risen to the ranks of the internet hierarchy. With over 17.5 million followers across his social media platforms, the viral star has made a name for himself by finding the sweet spot between comedy and the realities of healthcare in his videos.
“I feel like more healthcare workers should be able to tell their stories about what goes on behind the curtain at a hospital,” said Dela Cruz. “The only thing the public really knows is that we give medication and wrap bandages. No, we do more than that. We have multiple jobs we don’t get paid for. But we do them all [because] we chose to be nurses.”
Dela Cruz further emphasized how it’s important to highlight the real responsibilities and challenges healthcare workers face on the daily. “I think there are so many ways people criticize nurses, especially if they’re not nurses themselves,” he added. “It’s like if a nurse makes a mistake, you see it on the news. But do [we] even know how many lives [that nurse] saved today? Or why the nurse made the mistake? Was it because she was overworked, because she had to fill in somebody else’s shift because nobody was there to do it? There’s always something negative to say about nurses, but never the positive.”
A Homecoming Tour
Dela Cruz draws inspiration from the nurses he’s worked with, along with his mother, who worked abroad as a caregiver to financially support their family back in the Philippines. “She’s really sassy,” says Dela Cruz of his mother. “Or… I think I just call her sassy, but she’s really just a straightforward Filipino lady. When I told her that I was going into comedy, she was like, ‘Are you funny? You’re not funny.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, mom. I’m the funniest person you’ve ever met!’ She told me to go back to nursing.”
Almost 15 years after he emigrated from the Philippines, Dela Cruz is set to return to his home country as part of his first-ever Asia stand-up tour.
“I didn’t expect myself to be in stand-up comedy,” said Dela Cruz, whose onstage performances involve him doing crowdwork as his healthcare alter ego in scrubs. “With TikTok, you’re behind the camera for most of it, so you can just repeat every single scene. But with [stand-up], whatever comes out of your mouth is what’s going to make people laugh.”
Despite his initial misgivings, Dela Cruz has quickly embraced his “whole new personality” as a stand-up comedian. Having performed over 200 shows and sold over 200,000 tickets across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, he will now be bringing his signature style of comedy to the SM Mall of Asia Arena on May 29.
“This show is something I’m really proud of,” he said. “I can’t wait to bring my 55 family members who’ve already contacted me. They were like, ‘We’re gonna bring four jeepneys to drive to MOA!’”
“I want to give my Filipinos the same exact joy I provide here in North America and Europe,” Dela Cruz added. “Because our people deserve the same laughter, too.”
John Dela Cruz is represented by Logan Watkins at Select Management Group and CAA. Events promoter Insignia Presents brings Nurse John’s “The Short-Staffed: Around the World” tour to Manila, as part of its commitment to building the city’s comedy scene.
