Nikki Glaser on Hosting the 2025 Golden Globes, Trading Bracelets at the Eras Tour, and the One Roast Joke She Can’t Forget

If you even vaguely follow comedy, you’re probably already familiar with Nikki Glaser, whose Netflix roast of Tom Brady became one of the most viral moments of 2024. For her next act, Glaser will be taking on the storied task of hosting the Golden Globe Awards on January 5, and in preparation, Glaser stopped by The Run-Through in late December to discuss everything from her true feelings about being roasted (spoiler: she’s not a fan) to her outfit plans for the Globes and her favorite comedy specials on Netflix. Listen to the full thing above—and read excerpts from the conversation below.

Chloe Malle: What else is on the agenda for your trip to New York?

Nikki Glaser: This is actually the last thing before I head to the airport. I live in St. Louis, but I’m [staying] in LA, preparing for the Golden Globes. I’m out there because there’s so many comedy clubs [where] I can just run around and do sets all the time and test material. I walk onstage and go, “Hey, guys, I’m hosting the Golden Globes. Do you mind if I run some jokes? Please don’t tell anyone these jokes.”

Malle: What if somebody records the set and posts it?

Glaser: Well, if they do that, I’m screwed. [Laughs.] I just kind of trust; I’m the same way with my purse and my things. I just trust people not to steal, and if they do, I’ll be disappointed in the world, but it hasn’t not worked out for me yet.

Malle: What else are you doing for Globes prep? I feel like it’s a marathon, and you’re really in the last stretch.

Glaser: It’s such a marathon! I mean, I’ve never trained for a marathon, but some days you’re running 20 miles, and some days it’s one mile. Last night I walked onstage and was like, “Your laughter is going to decide whether or not I do this at the Globes,” which I think is kind of cool for audiences, because then I’m like, “Watch it on CBS on January 5,” and then if you hear a joke that you liked and I do it at the Globes, you can tell your friends, “I told her to do that.”

Malle: Are there times when you can tell that a joke is just not landing?

Glaser: You know, it’s usually because either the joke isn’t properly written, or my delivery is off, or I stumble over a word, or it’s like, they don’t know who these nominees are. Like, people are just consuming so much media right now that we’re not all locked into the same movies and the same TV. Emilia Pérez is a movie that’s on Netflix and it came out in November and it’s nominated for 10 awards and stars Selena Gomez, but I can’t find a single person in my life who’s seen it. It’s a tricky thing, because really the only subject matter in the monologue where everyone’s kind of on board and I don’t have to explain the plotline before I make the joke is Wicked. And then obviously there’s Timothée Chalamet, Nicole Kidman, Selena Gomez…

It’s going to be more about pointing out the celebrities, because so much of these jokes are based on the reaction that the celebrities make. As much as we want to go, “No, I form my own opinion,” we are desperate to find out what other people think before we think about it. And if [celebrities] are not smiling after a joke, people will—even if they love the joke—they’ll be like, that joke sucked. I have to kind of cater the jokes to make sure people are going to laugh at them.

Malle: That makes sense.

Glaser: I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or feel like they were called out. You know, I watch these monologues and I see the host say, like, “Timothée Chalamet is here,” and then everyone applauds and you just see Timothée in the shot being like, what’s coming down the pike? There are so many factors to consider that I’m not used to with regular standup, where it only matters if the audience laughs or not. It’s not based on one person’s reaction who the camera’s going to go to afterwards.

Malle: I would think that the Tom Brady roast would prepare you well for that.

Glaser: It did, just in terms of the high stakes and the live aspect of it. We’re there to celebrate people, but that’s after my monologue. My monologue is a comedy moment, so it’s just going to be pretty rapid-fire. Right now, it’s just about writing hundreds of jokes and sifting through them and trying to find the best ones in the best order, which is a ton of work.

Emma Specter: Do you generally have an internal sense of whether a joke is too edgy, or is it more based on audience reaction?

Malle: Or do you have one person who will read your jokes and be like, “It’s too mean,” like your mom or someone?

Glaser: I think it’s the audience, which is why I’m trying them out. I think because I’ve been doing it so long and have performed in front of crowds for so many years, I just have a good sense of what people like and what they don’t like, and I’m really sensitive to how sensitive celebrities are. Everyone else just wants me to go in there and go for blood, because I think most of us kind of resent the elite Hollywood people who think they’re better than us and are so smug. Even though we worship them, people really want me to let them have it, and it’s easy for people to say—they don’t have to deal with the backlash. They’re like, “Just do it, Nikki, just go hard, full-throttle,” and I’m like, “Yeah, well, that’s bad advice.” Ricky Gervais, when he hosted and roasted everyone, that was his last time, and he knew it was his last time. He kept saying, “I don’t care. I’m not doing this again,” so that’s fitting for that. But I can’t come out there and go “I don’t care.” [But] I do care. Like, this is my first time. I’d like to do this again and again, and a lot of those celebrities have probably never heard of me, these A-listers, and even if they have, they’re like, who are you to make fun of me? So it’s delicate.

Malle: Is there any time when you’ve really regretted going too far?

Glaser: Not yet. To be honest with you, I had caught wind that maybe Gisele was a little bit hurt by being mentioned at the Tom Brady roast. And I did have a joke in which I had painted her in a sexual position with her new boyfriend. I didn’t write that joke, but I chose to tell it, and it was killing in the clubs, and I was still questioning it, because I’m like, she’s not there, you know? But then I was like, it’s also with her boyfriend who she’s with and loves, and so I’m rationalizing it in my head, like, “It’s not so bad, and it makes her look good in the end.” [But] I think that was probably one of the jokes she was referencing that she didn’t love and felt uncomfortable with. There was a part of me that was like,"Yeah, that’s fair." Like, she has a right to feel that way, and I probably do owe her an apology. At a roast, you’re signing up to be there. Gisele didn’t. But the Golden Globes is different because it’s not a roast and people aren’t being paid to be there to be roasted. I have to be a little bit more gentle. I’ll probably feel the same way I did after the roast, where I’m like, “I maybe shouldn’t have gone that hard,” and I’ll only feel that way if it doesn’t go well. If it goes well, I’ll be like, Yeah, I definitely should have.

Specter: This has been such an incredible year for you, work-wise; you’ve been nominated for an Emmy, a Grammy, a Golden Globe, and a Critics Choice Award for Someday You’ll Die, your comedy special. Did you feel like any of this was on the horizon as you headed into this year?

Glaser: Every year, people are kind of like, “This is gonna be your year.” It’s been happening for the last 15 years of my career, and finally it actually did happen, but I have a feeling that the Tom Brady roast is really what cracked everything open. My special came out a week after that, and more eyes were on it. People kind of knew who I was, so it wasn’t as shocking, maybe. I think making that special in 2023 was the first time I started to feel a lot of confidence in what I was doing, like, “Oh, I really do belong. I’m not an imposter.”

I’ve never thought I was the most talented person, but you can’t really deny the years you put in. Just based solely on how hard I’ve worked, I should be good. I really don’t think you can fake confidence, but when you suddenly like yourself and appreciate the work you’ve put in and feel like you deserve to be doing what you’re doing…because I think I’ve always felt like, “I feel bad, they’re spending all this money on these lights and this set design. I should just put this on YouTube!” But this HBO special was the first time I was like “No, I deserve to be there.” I brought my boyfriend in as my producing partner because he produces live TV, and we’ve done projects together. This is the first time he actually produced it, so he made me create the special from a place of, like, “Let’s make a special that makes you look like a star.”

Then for the Tom Brady roast, I just knew it was gonna be a huge deal. It was Tom Brady! It was like, nobody this high-profile has ever done a roast before. I mean, maybe Justin Bieber, but no one who’s so protected or who’s never had a sense of humor about themselves or who isn’t already kind of a punchline. I was like, “I gotta get in on this,” because I didn’t even want to do roasts anymore. It had been a few years, and when you get into your late 30s as a woman on these roasts, they just start calling you old and ugly and “horse face” or whatever they want to say. No matter how well I do and how much crap I talk, it would hurt my feelings every time I did a roast, no matter how great they were for my career. But then Tom Brady was announced and I was texting with the head of comedy at Netflix, who’s a friend of mine, and I was like, “Can I please do the roast?” He was like, “I don’t know, Tom’s going to choose, and it’s going to be up to him,” and I go, “You tell Tom Brady I’m the Tom Brady of roasting.” I was probably eating hummus with my fingers when I was saying that, you know, in my bathrobe, bent over with dog hair all over me. But you have those little moments where you actually do have confidence in yourself and believe in yourself, even if they’re just like for 30 seconds every couple months.

But after the roast, my face was everywhere. Like, as a Swiftie, I know how much Taylor Swift shows up in our feeds, and that was me for a day. Anywhere I went, there were people that had me on their phones.

Malle: One of my favorite Vogue.com pieces this year was the one where Lilah Ramzi interviewed you about attending 22 Taylor Swift concerts.

Glaser: That was one of my favorite interviews of the year. I love talking about Taylor Swift.

Malle: How are you feeling now that the Eras Tour is over?

Glaser: I think I actually needed the break? It’s a lot of shows. I’m also on tour, so I would do a show Thursday in a city, fly to a different city Friday, do a show, fly to a different city Saturday, and then Sunday I would always find whatever Sunday show she was [doing] and fly to go see her. I would fly my mom out, and she went to 10 of the shows with me.

Malle: Did you swap friendship bracelets with kids?

Glaser: Tons. It’s so adorable.But also, some of the bracelets people gave me were really inappropriate. Like, people made me bracelets with, like, “Someday You’ll Die” written on them or something. Or, you know, “Funny Bitch” or whatever. Then I would trade them with these little girls and be like, “Choose one! Oh God, not that one!” That’s the thing I love about her shows the most, is just being around other Swifties. I feel bad for Swifties who didn’t get to go to Eras Tour shows, but I will say that before going to the Eras Tour, I was going to these Swiftie sing-along nights in different cities. They are, I’m not going to say just as fun as the Eras Tour, but that’s what I’ll continue going to to get that vibe of camaraderie with all the Swifties singing along. Like, that’s what you want, and at a sing-along, you don’t have to watch her; you can watch each other. Don’t count those out as not valuable Swiftie experiences, because they are so, so fulfilling.

Malle: I feel like dressing to host an award show is a gargantuan task. What era are you channeling for the Globes? What is the vibe going to be?

Glaser: You know, I think I’m looking toward possibly a pink look, because I like the idea of looking really feminine and really, like, innocent. Like Glinda, the innocent assassin. “I would never make fun of you. I’m just here to celebrate all of you and I’m a pretty girl who has never thought a bad thing in her life and unless a man permitted me to tell a joke, I wouldn’t even dare do it.” It’s unassuming, and it lulls them into a sense of security as an audience that “she looks too pretty and nice to be mean.” There’s something really fun about that.

Specter: Is there any celebrity or comedian that you most hope would roast you?

Glaser: No, I hate being roasted. I literally can’t take criticism. I don’t like any feedback. I have been sober from Internet comments for over five years, probably more. I will sometimes look at Instagram because that’s probably where [I have the most friends] and people aren’t as ruthless there. But the good stuff is never good enough, as we know. I’m just an insecure person and the mean stuff stays with you forever. People don’t understand that there was a time where you didn’t know how everyone felt about something as soon as you looked at it. I just do not indulge in it myself at all. It’s like when I quit drinking; it’s fun, but it always makes me feel bad, so I just have to be completely sober from it, because it’s never, ever done anything good for me. I still think about some of the jokes that have been made about me from roasts six years ago. I still see them when I look in the mirror. Like, they will uncover things about you that you don’t even know about yourself, or it’s a thing that you’ve always been like, Yeah, I think this about me, but I’m just really mean to me. No one else has noticed that. And then it’s like, Oh, fuck, they did too. I think I cried at one of the afterparties because I was so sad about something.

Malle: Do you remember what it was?

Glaser: That one was probably about me not being funny, and I think Pete Davidson had one about how I don’t have an ass, and I really thought that was something that I just…like, I mean, I knew I didn’t, and I know I don’t, but the fact that he had really thought about it, or maybe someone wrote the joke for him and he didn’t have to think about it at all, but he at least had to be like, “That works for her.”

Specter: I guess in order to roast, you have to kind of open yourself up to be roasted.

Glaser: I think that’s one of the reasons why I feel like I can get away with it, is because, well, I’m putting myself up here and staying open to this stuff, too. So I should be able to say what I want, but there really is a part of it that sucks so, so deeply.

Specter: Yeah, I don’t want Pete Davidson to ever notice my ass.

Glaser: And then I think Sybil Shepherd had a joke about me at the Bruce Willis roast that was like, “I saw Nikki backstage. I walked into the bathroom and I saw her from behind and I was like, Oh my God, that’s a model. And then she turned around and I go, Oh, comedian.” At these roasts, they would write jokes about me not being funny because they just didn’t know who I was. And then I would go up first, I would kill, and then the joke doesn’t make sense anymore, because I just proved that wrong. One time, I think Dom Irrera was doing his roast jokes and saw one about me not being funny and goes, “Ah, skip that one.” I was like, Yes! ’Cause he knew it wasn’t gonna resonate. But then there was a joke where Blake Griffin said I looked like Larry Bird, and the response from the crowd was so overwhelming; like, it killed so hard that I was like, I can’t deny that. That was the first time I ever went and got injections in my face in a way that was like, let’s restructure things. So, yeah, there’s consequences for sure.

Specter: Is there a comedy special you’ve watched recently that really makes you laugh?

Glaser: Dave Attell’s is amazing. It’s on Netflix. I just love rapid-fire jokes. I really don’t like comedians who pace around; I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of applause breaks. I’m like, I’m not home on my couch fucking applauding, so can we just, like, cut to the next joke? I don’t need to watch you just simmer in how amazing that joke was. And it really wasn’t even that good. You just made a face that made everyone go, “I guess we have to applaud now?” Anyway, Dave Attell, Neal Brennan, who I think had the special of the year—I could not recommend it more. Rachel Feinstein’s one of my favorite comedians of all time. Nick Griffin has an amazing free special on YouTube that you can go watch. Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh on Netflix is, I think, one of the best ones ever. His incorporation of music, I mean…Bo Burnham does that really well as well, but yeah, those are some that come to mind.