Nikki Glaser would also be disappointed in herself if she weren’t so funny
Glaser knows it’s the coffee roaster’s paradox. “It’s a risk you have to take,” she said. “This is what happened. You have to show it, you have to take it.”
Glaser has certainly proven that she can do it, ripping Tom Brady anew without ever having met the man. “The first time I met him was when I was on the podium,” she said. “This is the first time I talked to him. We don’t meet backstage. We don’t have Zoom calls. There is no preamble to this. That makes the hard going easier.”
Now it’s safe to say Brady knows who she is. “Now Tom Brady knows my name,” she said incredulously. “In his joke, he didn’t say it in full but he said ‘Glaser.’ He’s right.” It’s clear that Glaser is still processing his turbulent week. “I will never receive this much attention until I die,” she said. “I have an inkling of what it feels like to be Taylor Swift on a really slow day for her.”
But being Taylor Swift on a slow day is still life-changing for Glaser, who has been a professional comedian for more than 20 years. “I advanced in my career like never before overnight,” she says. “It just doesn’t happen these days with content saturation—all eyes are on things like this.” She adds a joke for good measure. “Outside of Will Smith slap me, I didn’t think I would get this much attention as a comedian in my life.”
Glaser’s timing couldn’t have been better. Her next comedy special, One day you will die, premieres on HBO this Saturday, May 11. In the special, the 39-year-old comedian loudly and proudly declares that she never wants to have children, while expressing her raw emotions , her raw take on aging and motherhood in the only way she knows how. “My truth is that I don’t have kids and I’m really jealous when my friends have kids because I don’t see them anymore,” she said. VF. “The funniest thing for me is when my friends are trying, I say, Please don’t let this happen. It’s funny to admit it because it’s crazy, but I can’t help it from being imprinted on my mind. Like, Oh, I want her to have a child. Just not yet, because we’re about to have a girl’s trip.”
That’s not righty One day you will die just about one thing. In the special, Glaser offers wise explanations on topics including but not limited to abortion, suicide, autism, gangs, heroin, and, yes, there’s even a Transgender jokes aren’t terrible or two. In an era where famous comedians like Jerry Seinfeld constantly lamenting so-called PC culture and what they see as the corresponding death of comedy, Glaser is proof that you can still basically say whatever you want, as long as it’s funny funny.
“It’s funny that Jerry said that because he’s such a clean comedian,” she said. “Who is he insulting? I do not know. He masters the art of being as clean and funny as any dirty comic.” Glaser said that she wished for the kind of clean and accessible comedy that was a must for Seinfeld, but it was not within her reach. “I can be very dirty and I can be very dark, so I feel like I make people uncomfortable a lot,” she said. “But I know at my core, I’m a good person. So if I joke about something it’s only because it’s true and I want to draw attention to it.”
She added: “It’s not about wanting to hurt people’s feelings. “I want everyone to see what’s going on. Let’s talk about slaves making our clothes. Open your eyes. Joking about them won’t enslave them any more. It might actually get more people to know about it, even though it’s only under the guise of a joke. At least admit that slaves created your clothes by laughing at this joke, because it’s happening and you know it.”
The intersection of truth and comedy has long been a hot-button issue, especially with comics like Hasan Minhaj burnt to embellish or fabricate the stories they tell while standing up. Glaser isn’t interested in comedians telling stories—“I don’t have the patience for that”—but she is interested in the truth, even if it’s sometimes unpleasant. “I’ve never really lied on stage,” Glaser said. “People might say, ‘Oh, she’s just exaggerating for comedy.’ But I’m not really like that. Yes, I’ve beefed it up a bit, but it should be clear, the things in the story that I’m lying about. For a savvy consumer of stand-up comedy, you should be able to tell where I’m making a story end and then where the actual storytelling takes place.”