A few days before the presentation at MTelus of the third edition of its happening Tommy & Friendscomedian Tommy Néron, cited in the Discovery category at the next Gala Les Olivier, recounts the efforts that allowed him to eat something other than just bagels.
“Hunger for a comedian is the number one quality,” says Tommy Néron, a conviction that he doesn’t just mean figuratively. For a long time, the laughter recruit had to be satisfied with the least expensive item on the menu. “I often said to Charles Brunet [camarade de la relève] that I couldn’t wait to eat something other than a bagel. When that’s your goal, it’s easy to be in a good mood. »
Although he does not yet have the wallet to allow him to visit the great restaurants, Tommy Néron is certainly in a good mood, and not just because he can now eat as much as his appetite. Among his reasons to rejoice: in the fall of 2022, he filled Club Soda with the first edition of his evening Tommy & Friends, then did it again in January 2023, but this time at MTelus. Two weeks ago, he received his first nomination at the Gala Les Olivier, in the Discovery of the Year category.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Tommy Nero
Then his recent move to Everybody talks about itas well as tasty jokes sent to the eternal ghost Denis Coderre and to the businessman Luc Poirier, made him known to an audience which does not necessarily count among his 128,000 subscribers on TikTok, a small price to pay for all those who, on social networks, called him an insolent young person.
“I had to haste because I have a hat, glasses, that I am in my twenties and that I spoke to a rich gentleman and to a politician as I speak to everyone”, believes the one who, to the many unseemly people who announce to him in private messaging that he ruined his career, could reply that on the contrary, his agent’s phone rang a lot following his visit to Guy A. “The world on the Internet is angry. A lot, all the time. ” He smiles. “But I don’t think, no, that my career is over. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Tommy Nero
A local guy in the city
Tommy Néron, 26 years old, is ironically not a comedian drawing his raw material from politics, but rather an observer who often likes to overplay the dejection of a local guy when faced with certain incongruities of city life. “My stage character is very much my father who gets angry when reading something in the newspaper,” explains the native of Saint-Bruno, a municipality of around 3,000 souls in Lac-Saint-Jean.
His first show, directed by Laurent Paquin and “edited script” by Korine Côté, will also draw on more serious subjects, such as poverty, divorce and death, while avoiding the crutch, promises Tommy, of the “touching number », the ideal comedian being for him a tightrope walker moving on a thin wire, somewhere between real vulnerability and imperturbable efficiency.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Tommy Nero
It was in order to be a cameraman at RDS that the man who already voraciously consumed comedy podcasts moved to the metropolis in 2017. He was attracted, three months later, by the open mic evening at the Bordel comedy club. Nothing would ever be the same again.
“I have always been aware that we only have one life to live,” confides the youngest of a family of three, who almost died at birth, to the point where he was baptized on July 3, 1997, two days after his arrival on Earth, so as not to risk ending up in limbo.
But my awareness that we only have one life to live comes mainly from the fact that I have been around so many people who, for understandable reasons, stayed in jobs that made them unhappy. My father worked on the asphalt and when he came home he was rarely in a good mood. The moment he was happy was when he told my aunt about the joke he had sent to the boss.
Tommy Nero
Do you realize?
Even if this first time at the Brothel went well, the sequel will have been marked by several setbacks, including a refusal to the National School of Humor (from which he graduated in 2022), then two others on the show by Noovo The next stand-up. “The second refusal, I felt bitter. But it’s easier to complain than to ask yourself: what can I do? »
PHILIPPE LE BOURDAIS PHOTO, PROVIDED BY THE ARTIST
Tommy Néron on stage
What could Tommy Nero do? Investing in TikTok, where he stuck to a routine of one video per day for two years, a school in itself. This is where he will bring together a loyal audience, which will have allowed him to fill the MTelus without having been on TV, without having appeared in the newspapers and without having purchased a cenne of advertising, no small feat in the wonderful world of humor where such ascension once required budgets equivalent to several dozen bagels.
“That night, Phil Roy asked me, ‘Do you realize how hard it is, selling tickets? Do you realize what you have just accomplished?” And the truth is, no, I didn’t realize it at all. »
Tommy & Friends 3February 10, at MTelus
Visit the event page