Nikki Glaser: My Comedy Is Like Porn for Blind People

The last time Nikki Glaser was on The Last Laugh podcast, our conversation ended up producing material for her stand-up act. Now, in her return to the show, she apologizes for throwing me “under the bus” before sharing even more unfiltered thoughts about her objections to motherhood, her struggles with suicidal thoughts, and the very tricky balance between self-censorship and saying something she knows could get her “canceled”—all of which are integral to her latest HBO special Someday You’ll Die.

The comedian also reveals her approach to roasting Tom Brady at Netflix’s epic live event last weekend; explains why she decided to leave it all on the table with her jokes about Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other political figures while guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live; and shares how she’s feeling about turning 40 next month.

Before we can talk about her new special, we have to clear the air about the moment in her previous special, Good Clean Filth, when she directly called out the headline that topped her first appearance on this podcast: “Nikki Glaser Would Rather Be Fuckable Than Funny.”

“I thought, oh my God, people are going to come after me for this, I’m a bad feminist,” Glaser said on stage. “And it’s not even what I said. Honestly, I was misquoted. I remember talking to the journalist and what I did say was, ‘I value being fuckable more than being funny, but like, please don’t print that.’”

Two years later, Glaser tells me, “You did not do anything wrong by writing that headline. That is literally what I said. As a comedian, you have to throw people under the bus that don’t deserve it. My boyfriend deals with this all the time. And I did not say it was off-the-record, so I threw you under the bus journalistically. I’m sorry that was you, but thank you for that joke!”

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Glaser’s new material in Someday You’ll Die—about her decision not to have kids, her suicidal thoughts, and, of course, sex—gives us no shortage of potentially controversial topics to delve into this time (and inspire potentially regrettable headlines). And nowhere is that more apparent than in the epic closing bit of her special, in which Glaser perches on a stool to act out the hypothetical experience of being in an explicit gang bang.

“There’s kind of no difference between what I do and an actual gang bang, except that it’s not happening to me,” she says. “But that’s the funny thing about my stand-up. I talk about sex in a way that, if you were blind, this is porn. I’m like, I could never do porn, and then I pretty much do it.”

So while there is a small part of her that does “regret” ending her special that way, Glaser says she ultimately felt the “risk” was worth it. “And I’m glad I was doing Pilates training for this,” she jokes, “because I would not have been able to hold that gang bang pose as long as I did. It was insane.”

Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by following The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.

I have to tell you that I felt personally attacked in your new special as well. Because you open with about 20 minutes about how having kids is the dumbest thing you can do. And since we last talked on this podcast, I’ve had two of them.

You know what? As a dad, it’s the smartest thing. I would absolutely sign up to be a dad. I think it’s a very smart decision. I think it brings a lot of joy to your life. It’s not as much work. It just isn’t. There’s just an added stress that comes with being a mom. You just have to do more. I would need to do so much to really nail that role. And I just don’t have it in me. So I don’t think you made the bad decision, I think your wife did.

OK, well, she’ll appreciate that.

[Laughs] I do have a lot of feelings about having kids. I have to take a side to really prove my thesis, which is, I don’t need to have kids. So for me, this was an exploration of how do I really sell this to myself? Because if I’m being honest, of course I struggle with that decision and I don’t have that much time to decide. In my twenties it just felt like I had such a long time before that was even something that I would consider not being able to do anymore. And suddenly, it’s just knocking on my doorstep. And if I wanted to do it now, it would still be a struggle, but I could still do it. And I want to be normal. I want to do the thing that everyone seems to want to do. I feel left out.

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Your new special, Someday You’ll Die, has the darkest premise that you’ve put out there so far. Does that reflect your state of mind right now?

I struggle with self-esteem and depression. It’s not easy. It’s bad for me. I’m cyclically going through really intense self-doubt and imposter syndrome and immense depression and just defeat. And it seems to get worse the more successful I get, and it’s something that I’m constantly trying to figure out and find a cure for because I can’t really keep going like this. Things will be going good and I’ll be confident and feel like, you know what? I don’t need more, and this is enough and I am talented and I didn’t trick anyone, and then it’s gone by the next day. Neither feeling lasts forever. I’m so glad the feeling of depression doesn’t ever last, and that’s what kind of gets me through it, is knowing that it will lift at some point. But the good times don’t last ever either.

And so I think I just really have become very comfortable talking about depression and my thoughts of suicide. I’m not ashamed of it anymore. I’ve let myself off the hook for those feelings. So I think that somewhere in the past couple of years, I’ve just said, OK, you can start talking about the thing that you were scared to talk about or ever reveal, which is, despite all your success, despite how great things are going in your life, you still think about dying a lot. And you wish to die a lot of times. There’s some freedom in just saying that stuff out loud. I feel like I have some control over it when I talk about it so much. And if I can laugh about it, I can own it a little bit more and control it more.

You say in the new special that you talked about your suicidal thoughts on Joe Rogan’s podcast and then people told you to kill yourself. But the reaction from his listeners wasn’t all negative?

No, no, no, that’s a joke. It’s really based on the truth, which was that so many people reached out to me and were like, ‘I have those feelings too, I struggle with that as well, I have suicidal thoughts,’ and I felt so comforted by other people’s depression. When you think of Joe Rogan fans, you think they’re probably trolling women: “You’re not funny and kill yourself,” which I have gotten, and not even just from Joe Rogan fans. But it just fit perfectly for that joke. I have to probably get ahead of it and call him and say, that’s just a joke, please don’t hate me.

And also, I just thought it would make me such a liability to say I’m gonna kill myself or have thoughts of suicide or something, to the industry. Like, “We’re not going to want to work with this girl.” But they don’t care if you kill yourself. It’ll make their project go better if you kill yourself. People in this industry don’t fucking care about your mental health. It has not made me a liability at all, it’s made me more relatable.

There’s this idea that you bring up in the special about who’s allowed to say what on stage. You talk about the idea of caveating jokes based on your own experience to avoid getting canceled. For example, you say that you’re allowed to talk about suicide because you’re going to do it someday. Or someone will say, my cousin is trans so I can talk about that issue.

I think it’s probably going to look like I’m calling out comics and being like, come on, you’re just using your family member, like, “I can tell these jokes because I have someone who has special needs.” And comedians do that. And I think, honestly, those comedians do have a very interesting personal take that they should share. But I don’t like when comedians are told you can’t have a take unless you have someone—that you’re not allowed to have rape jokes unless you’ve been raped somehow. Somehow that makes it OK. I could be raped. I have thoughts about rape, and I have thoughts about the “r-word.” I’m terrified to ever say that word on stage, but I feel like I probably could say it if I had someone in my family. I just don’t think it’s fair to say that some people can say it, and some people can’t. I have affection for people that have Down syndrome, but just because I don’t have a brother [with it] I can’t say it? And I don’t mean that I think that comedians that have a brother shouldn’t be able to say it. I just think we all should be able to talk about any subject. So I think it was just finding the irony in the fact that I could only do rape jokes if I’d been raped—like somehow the audience would be soothed by the fact that I was raped was funny to me.

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Do you often find that you’re censoring yourself on stage?

Yes and no. I mean, I really don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. So if I said the “r-word” and there was someone in the audience who had suffered because of that word, or felt called out or alienated by it, I really would feel horrible. When you first start tackling a subject like that, and you’re figuring out the wording still and making it palatable, that’s where you have people getting offended and worrying about getting canceled. But I just know that I’m not a hateful person, and that I don’t like making people feel bad about themselves or sad. And so if I do eventually get canceled, I think I’ll be able to forgive myself. I don’t know if anyone else will. But yeah, I do watch what I say a lot, and I’m getting ready to do something where I might have a joke with the “r-word” in it and I’m very, very scared.

Is this thing that you’re preparing for a roast, by any chance? [Note: We recorded this interview before this past Sunday’s ‘Greatest Roast of All Time,’ where Glaser did, in fact, use the “r-word” in reference to Rob Gronkowski.]

Yeah, I’m preparing for the Roast of Tom Brady. And now I’m educating myself about football. I just learned about football from Taylor Swift, now I’m doing all this research on Tom Brady and I’m learning to love it and learning to really respect him. So I have a great angle, I feel, but it is terrifying. I haven’t done a roast since pre-COVID. I thought it was behind me. I thought if they ever come asking again, I’m gonna say no, because the last time I did one, I was 34, and if you called me old, it didn’t really work. But now I’m 39, and this is old. They can make those jokes now, or make fun of my looks. And it’s not like I’ve gotten any more secure in my looks. It’s painful to do a roast. So I’m kind of worried about that. But I’m in this state of mind right now ahead of it where I’m so focused on writing and I’m not even thinking about the jokes that could be written about me. And that’s always really rough when you sit there and hear about how ugly I am or how unfunny I am.

From Tom Brady!

Yes, from Tom Brady. So it’s going to be rough. But I’m not thinking about that part of it yet.

Well, you’re definitely more famous now than you were at your last roast, so maybe you won’t get those jokes as much.

Yeah, those don’t bother me because I’m pretty aware of my level. I don’t care if people say I’m not famous. I don’t really care about being famous. I mean, yes, of course I care because it means more money, which means more security, which means I won’t die in the apocalypse, which is my biggest fear. But I don’t care, please come at me for that. I would love it.

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I remember there were famous things in previous roasts, like with Donald Trump, how you weren’t allowed to talk about how much money he had. I wonder what will be off limits for Tom Brady? Maybe that long kiss with his son?

Dude, they have kind of said don’t go after the kids. And I was like, why would I go after his kids? Of course, I remember the kiss story, but that doesn’t really seem to involve the kid. Well, it involves the kid, but it’s not an indictment of the kid. And as someone who was kissed by their dad on the mouth my whole childhood and into my adulthood, until I had to put a stop to it, I feel like I can come at that joke from a place of empathy. I’m finding this time, I have more of a conscience about it. I have more empathy. And I’m not coming from a place where I’ll just say anything. I don’t ever watch any clips of mine, but the other day I saw one and I was like, what the fuck? Who are you? Why would you ever say this to someone? I couldn’t believe what I said to people. I really was shocked by it. And I understand, finally, the response people give me about the roasts, which is always like, “I don’t know how you do it.”

I mean, you really have a license to say anything, because if they’re there and they sign up for it, you really can go after them. Now, jokes about [Brady’s ex-wife] Gisele? I don’t want to frame Gisele in a poor light. I don’t want to ever frame his kids—they’re not on the dais, they haven’t signed up for it. But anyone else, I will not pull punches. But I will say that I have a lot more heart going into this one than I have in the past. I don’t want to be mean like that. It has to be really good to be that mean.

You talk a lot about aging in the new special. And you and I are almost the exact same age. I’m turning 40 in a week, as we’re talking, and your birthday is next month, right?

Whoa! We are so the same age.

Yeah, so I just figured I’d bring that up and see how you’re feeling right now about turning 40?

I really am OK about it. I kind of do this thing where I always say I’m the next age. So I’ve been saying I’m 40 all year, so that I can prepare when it does happen. It’s not that big of a deal. I’m kind of always ready for the worst to happen. I hate aging. It’s been difficult. There are good days and there are bad days. I’m feeling my stock sink, I just can see it coming. I don’t think it’s really started to happen yet, but when you get up there and you become less sexually desirable, the industry isn’t as excited about you. And I want to keep working, so that’s where my desire to stay hot comes from. And it just is a good life to be considered a good-looking person.

But yeah, I think I’ll be OK. It’s inevitable that I’m going to figure out how to like myself as I age, because I’ve realized there’s no way around it. It’s just going to happen and the only way out is through, and you’ve just got to embrace it. It’s going to be a struggle, but for now I feel like 40 is fucking young. I know what’s ahead. I’m really scared about 60. I’m fine with 40. I’ve let go of wanting to look 20 anymore. I really feel that way. But I still also feel very stunted emotionally. I’m not married, I still rent, I don’t own a place, I don’t have kids. I don’t feel 40 in many ways, but I think it’s cool. Whenever you turn the next decade, you’re the youngest of that decade. So I’m, like, the oldest 30-year-old right now and I’m about to be so young for my forties!

Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.

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