Who is Nicolas Cantu? Kids TV star to beef with YouTube’s Dream

At just 20 years old, the young actor has already built up an impressive filmography for himself. It dates back to a voice appearance in a Dora the Explorer spin-off in 2016 and then right up to an acting role in the Steven Spielberg-led The Fablemans back in 2022.

Having racked up features on the likes of Family Guy, DuckTales and the Powerpuff Girls, the internet appears to best remember Cantu as Gumball Watterson on The Amazing World of Gumball, in which he appeared in 71 episodes between 2017 and 2019.

You may have also seen a young Cantu on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, in which he played Elton Ortiz.

Cantu’s YouTube rise (and fall)

Aside from his impressive acting CV, Cantu spent his teenage years developing his profile on YouTube under the alias ‘junky janker’.

Between 2016 and 2020, Cantu amassed over 400,000 subscribers through an inconsistent schedule of sporadic uploads, with content varying from parodies to vlogs and Minecraft videos.

In September 2023, Cantu returned to the Junku Janker channel after three years of silence to announce that he would be moving to a new channel titled nicolasCAN2.

Cantu’s new channel has attracted just shy of 9000 subscribers in its first two months of existence – its content appearing to be a little bit more abstract and edgy than that of Junky Janker’s.

This change in direction is in fitting with Cantu’s Twitter account, where his quarter of a million followers are regularly subjected to memes that cut a little close to the bone and likely wouldn’t be appropriate for the Cartoon Network that Cantu made a name for himself on.

Inside the beef with Dream

That brings us up to the present day, where Cantu currently finds himself in the wake of a very public spat with Minecraft enthusiast Dream.

The pair first began trading blows when Cantu insulted a Dream parody account, prompting the now-maskless gamer to post a range of claims about an alleged incident that took place between the pair.

It was claimed that Cantu had physically attacked Dream at an event before verbally assaulting an Uber driver – both of which Cantu immediately fessed up to.

The beef did not stop there, however. After Dream uploaded footage of the Uber ride in question, Cantu proceeded to attack Dream’s character, later asserting to his followers that he had won “the debate.”

While the internet dissects everything that was said by both parties, the argument appears to be dormant for now with neither star tweeting in the last few days, though one suspects we haven’t heard the end of it just yet.

Related Topics