Cheer up, Ricky Gervais fans – Nikki Glaser is the perfect Golden Globes host

The stand-up comedian had a breakout year thanks to her new HBO special and a viral performance at Netflix’s ‘Roast of Tom Brady’. Kevin E G Perry examines why her close-to-the-bone comedy makes her the ideal choice to host this weekend’s Golden Globes

Last May, Nikki Glaser tackled the greatest quarterback in the history of American football and made herself a star in the process. None of the two million viewers who tuned in to Netflix’s Roast of Tom Brady were left in any doubt as to who handed out the most savage burns of the night, and many of Glaser’s devastating barbs quickly went viral on social media.

With a deceptively sweet smile and deft timing, Glaser pulled no punches as she dealt out killer lines about Brady’s reluctance to retire (“I get it, it’s hard to walk away from something that’s not your pregnant girlfriend”), his $30m crypto losses (“How did you fall for that? Even Gronk [former teammate Rob Gronkowski ] was like: ‘Me know that not real money’”) and his divorce from supermodel Gisele Bündchen (“You have seven rings – well, eight, now that Gisele gave hers back”). Even comedy greats were impressed by Glaser’s rapier wit and the precision of her attacks. “No one is gonna do a better roast set than that,” Conan O’Brien told Glaser later on his podcast, adding that all future roasts will be measured against it. “Where is it on the Nikki Glaser scale? ‘It’s a 6.2.’ That’s pretty good, but it’s not her 10.”

‘I get it, it’s hard to walk away from something that’s not your pregnant girlfriend’: Nikki Glaser at ‘The Roast of Tom Brady’ (Getty for Netflix)

Tomorrow we’ll get the chance to see whether Glaser can return to those heights as she’s given the opportunity to roast the whole of Hollywood in one night. Her selection as host of the Golden Globes has made the awards show must-watch television again, after last year’s disastrous last-minute host Jo Koy bombed with a string of dud jokes and the ill-advised decision to throw his writers under the bus.

Historically, the Golden Globes tended to either go without a host or simply pair a couple of good-looking actors. That changed in 2010 when The Office co-creator Ricky Gervais took over the gig and decided to use the opportunity to goad and mock Hollywood stars. He memorably joked that year that he “liked a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man is Mel Gibson”. That reference to Gibson’s DUI and the actor’s subsequent antisemitic rant was just the start of it. The following year, Gervais returned and set his sights on offending even higher-profile targets like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. “It seems like everything this year was three-dimensional,” he joked, “except the characters in The Tourist.”

In total, Gervais has hosted the ceremony five times, once more than former Saturday Night Live duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who kept up the trend of skewering stars with jokes about George Clooney (“Gravity is nominated for best film. It’s the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age”) and Leonardo DiCaprio: “Like a supermodel’s vagina, let’s give a warm welcome to Leonardo DiCaprio…”

Glaser is set to continue in that no-holds-barred lineage. Last month, she revealed she’d approached Gervais for advice about how to nail the gig, telling CBS: “His advice was just: ‘Be yourself. You’re not one of them. Don’t try to walk out acting like you’re an A-lister, just because you’re invited.’”

Glaser in her latest HBO special ‘Someday You’ll Die’ (HBO)

While Glaser certainly isn’t a film or television A-lister, she’s spent years rising through the ranks of stand-up comedy. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in June 1984, Glaser grew up in St Louis, Missouri, a long way from Hollywood. She fell in love with comedy watching Julia Louis-Dreyfus play the sharp-witted, assertive Elaine on Seinfeld and started honing her stand-up craft after being inspired by Sarah Silverman. While still studying English at the University of Kansas, she got her first big break competing on the reality show Last Comic Standing, making it to the semi-finals in 2006.

A decade of touring as a road comic followed, as Glaser honed her sharp, acerbic voice night after night. She released her first hour-long stand-up special, Perfect, on Paramount in April 2016, but it was her appearance on Comedy Central Roast of Rob Lowe later that same year that really announced her arrival as a biting new voice in comedy. She didn’t hold back, delivering a series of explicit references to Lowe’s 1988 sex tape scandal. As Lowe winced and even road-hardened comedians gasped, Glaser’s star was born. It was no surprise to see her invited back by Comedy Central a couple of years later for the roasts of Bruce Willis (where she announced: “You had an amazing action film career, until Jason Statham started balding”) and Alec Baldwin, where she joked of the actor’s wife Hilaria: “She’s so hot and fit. Does getting screamed at burn calories?”

‘Does getting screamed at burn calories?’: Glaser roasts Alec Baldwin on Comedy Central (Getty for Comedy Central)

By this point in her career, Glaser was starting to become a household name, even if her path to celebrity wasn’t always a smooth one. In 2018, she competed on the reality show Dancing with the Stars but found herself the first person eliminated. “That was truly a really low point of my life,” Glaser recently told The Wall Street Journal. “I never thought I’d be first place, but I thought I might last longer than the blind woman on the show.” Still, she wouldn’t have made it as a comedian if she couldn’t laugh at herself. The following year, she took over as presenter of the US version of Blind Date and has carved out a niche for herself as a dating show host with HBO Max’s FBoy Island and spin-off Lovers and Liars. In 2022, she starred in a reality show of her own, Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?, which followed her return to St Louis from Hollywood and her adjustment to a quieter life with her parents and her on-off (and current) partner of 12 years, television producer Chris Convy.

While her dalliances in reality TV have helped Glaser build her brand and win new fans, they haven’t detracted from her day job. Her most recent HBO stand-up special Someday You’ll Die (available in the UK on Now TV) is her darkest and most personal hour of comedy yet, and has earned her a Golden Globe nomination that means as well as hosting she’ll also be pitted against the likes of Adam Sandler, Ali Wong and Jamie Foxx in the Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television category.

As the morbid title suggests, Glaser uses her set to riff on mortality and mines black humour from her depressive episodes and thoughts of suicide. She jokes about opening up about her suicidal thoughts while appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, only to be reassured when her DMs were flooded with messages also telling her to kill herself. She adds that she hasn’t ruled out doing so in old age, using her status as a “future victim” of suicide to mock stand-ups who use personal connections to justify their material. “If I were to say right now, ‘Guys, I’m going to do some rape jokes,’ you might go, ‘Go back to the suicide stuff,’” she continues. “But if I said, ‘But I can do these jokes because I’ve been raped,’ you’d go, ‘Oh, thank God she was raped. OK, good. I thought she hadn’t been raped. Thank God she was brutally raped. Now I can relax. I was nervous before.’”

Glaser bringing ‘Someday You’ll Die’ to an acrobatic climax (HBO)

Glaser’s skilled handling of these dark subjects makes for a smart hour of comedy that ends with an impressively acrobatic extended pantomime of a “gang bang”, which I can’t imagine any other stand-up in the world pulling off. She’s promised to throw herself just as energetically into her Golden Globes performance, telling a recent interviewer that she decided against celebrating Christmas and new year in favour of spending more time writing, rehearsing and road-testing her material. “You just skip the holidays. It’s just too important,” Glaser told the WSJ. “I would hate that my monologue didn’t go well because I wanted to watch my nephew throw a fit over a toy he didn’t get.”

Come tomorrow night, it may well be the great and good of Hollywood throwing fits because of Glaser’s razor-sharp digs. She’s already hinted that Diddy, Trump and the Wicked press tour are all fair game but of course, her exact targets are staying under wraps until the show itself.

Glaser has however revealed that as well as speaking to Gervais she also received a few words of wisdom from Fey and Poehler. “Their advice, which I cherish so much, that could only come from someone who’d done it, is that the room is super noisy,” revealed Glaser. Fey and Poehler cautioned against engaging with rude A-listers, explaining: “They’re all talking, [but] don’t try to quiet them down because the audience at home can’t hear them.” It’s pertinent information, but likely unnecessary. If anyone’s capable of getting Hollywood to sit down, shut up and pay attention, it’s Nikki Glaser.

The 2025 Golden Globes air on Sunday 5 January. Here’s how to watch