Who Is Nikki Glaser? 12 Things To Know About The Stand-Up Comedian
The following article mentions an eating disorder.
Nikki Glaser has been in the stand-up game for quite some time now. And while she's long had the respect of comedy fans, it's only been within the past few years that she's broken through as an entertainer within the mainstream. That was certainly the case when she became one of the celebs to compete on "Dancing With the Stars," and then cemented even further with her hilarious hosting on "FBoy Island," the wild and irreverent TV dating show.
However, before all of that, she cut her teeth in the stand-up comedy scene, cohosted a podcast called "You Had to Be There," had a show with Sara Schaefer called "Nikki & Sara Live," hosted a series called "Not Safe with Nikki Glaser" — the list goes on. Of course, her showbiz credits are only a part of Nikki Glaser's story. To find out more, keep on reading to discover 12 things to know about the stand-up comedian.
Nikki Glaser was a teenage shoplifter
Back in 2017, Nikki Glaser issued a tweet revealing her larcenous past. "I got caught shoplifting when I was 19 and have never done it* since," she wrote, joking that the "it" wasn't shoplifting, but the act of getting caught shoplifting. Five years later, she'd share the same info in her "25 things you didn't know about me" feature in Us Weekly.
Glaser opened up about her teenage shoplifting during an interview with rapper Danny Brown for Noisey. Asked what she ripped off, she responded, "Crap I didn't even need. I just got a high from getting out of the store with new stuff." As Glaser recalled, she was busted while trying to exit Urban Outfitters with some stolen goods, and remembered what happened when the store manager looked through her bag. "I'm crying in the back office, she's going through my bag, and she goes [miming holding up an article of clothing], 'Really, this shirt? This is disgusting,'" Glaser quipped. "She was, like, judging my choices. And I was like, 'I don't even like it!'"
Glaser admitted that it's been some time since she last attempted to exit a store with stolen items, conceding that new retail security technology has probably made things a bit more challenging for the current generation of shoplifters. "I've been out of the game for awhile," she joked.
She thought she was going to be an FBoy Island contestant
In 2021, Nikki Glaser was tapped to host TV dating show "FBoy Island," for HBO's Max streaming service. The show's premise mixed romance with deception, with three single women confronted with 25 male suitors at a tropical resort — with the women challenged to determine which are legitimate nice guys looking for a relationship, and which are the titular FBoys who simply want to lure them into bed. The show ran for two seasons before being canceled, but found a new home — and even greater popularity — when a 3rd season was picked up by The CW.
In the series' initial announcement, Glaser revealed that when she was first presented with the opportunity, she kind of misunderstood what her role was going to be. "When I first got the call to be a part of a reality dating show called 'FBoy Island,' I said yes immediately," Glaser said, via Deadline. "Then I realized they weren't asking me to be one of the girls looking for love. That is not a joke; it was embarrassing."
Interviewed by Newsweek, Glaser emphasized how much she's enjoyed hosting the show. "My whole day is just hanging out at a beach waiting for their date to be over so I can come in and go, 'How was your date?'" she said. "I mean, it's the dream job, I don't have to do anything."
She struggled with an eating disorder
While speaking with Noisey, Nikki Glaser opened up about her experience in high school, admitting it hadn't been great. "And then I got an eating disorder my senior year, and I almost died," she said.
In an emotional essay she wrote for The Cut, Glaser revealed that she lived with that eating disorder for nearly 20 years. It began, she wrote, when she didn't have much of an appetite the day she was set to go on a first date with a classmate. "I got so nervous and excited about hanging out," she wrote. She ended up skipping her meals, and the next day, other classmates complimented her appearance. "I quickly became addicted to the results and positive feedback," she said, noting that it only snowballed from there.
"I didn't know how to stop dieting," she wrote. "Within a month, I was super-thin and super-popular. And then, a month after that, my hair was falling out and I had dry skin and mouth sores from malnutrition." She was eventually hospitalized, but figured out she could maintain her eating disorder by eating just enough that doctors didn't find it problematic. In 2020, she finally conquered her eating disorder with the help of a 12-step program.
If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who does, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).
Her career motivated her to stop drinking
While Nikki Glaser had experienced lifelong issues in her relationship with food, she experienced similar issues when it came to alcohol. In a 2023 interview with Triad City Beat, she explained that working in comedy clubs had led her drinking to escalate. "I was just at a point where I was drinking every night. You get paid in booze a lot," she said. Finding herself increasingly hungover when waking up in the morning, it wasn't until she was cast in the pilot for a potential TV show that she decided to take action. "I quit because I had just gotten a pilot and it was my first big shot and you can't make a show sleeping until 4 p.m. every day," she explained. "It wasn't a fix-all for me, but I think it was the greatest decision I ever made for me."
During an appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience," she remembered how she'd come to that decision. "I was at a point in my life where I was like, this has got to stop, because my hangovers were getting so ridiculous, and debilitating for a whole day," she said.
She was able to quit drinking entirely with the help of a self-help book: "Allen Carr's Quit Drinking Without Willpower." As Glaser explained, "His method is, this thing he does with drinking, any excuse you have to do that thing, he talks you out of it."
She changed her mind about freezing her eggs
In a 2023 interview with Salon, Nikki Glaser discussed issues related to fertility, revealing that she'd been in the process of freezing her eggs in case she wanted to have children later in life. She came to that decision, she explained, after reading an interview with former "Friends" star Jennifer Aniston, in which she shared her regret for not having frozen her eggs when she was younger.
It was when she started tallying up the cost — which would've landed somewhere around $20,000 at the time — that she began to ask herself what it was that she was doing, and why. "I realized I was really doing it so that if my boyfriend, who I don't want to have kids with now, dies or breaks up with me or I break up with him, if I meet someone else and they insist on having their own baby," she said.
While she'd be totally onboard with adoption if that scenario were to ever pop up in her life, she was told by friends that many men wouldn't feel the same way, and would insist on fathering a child on their own rather than adopting one. That brought her to a realization. "It got in my head that I was just doing this for a future man that didn't exist," she said. "So I just decided to not do it."
She's the voice of a Dave Matthews-themed satellite radio channel
In her aforementioned feature for Us Weekly, Nikki Glaser divulged that one of those things was her involvement in a satellite radio channel devoted to the Dave Matthews Band. "I'm the voice of the DMB Radio channel on SiriusXM," she declared. "I begged for the job because of my love for Dave [Matthews]." While listeners of the satellite radio channel will indeed hear Glaser's dulcet tones all over the place, she also served as emcee when Matthews and his band performed at a special SiriusXM-sponsored concert in 2023.
As Glaser explained during an appearance on the "About Last Night Podcast with Adam Ray," she's been crushing on Matthews since she was a pre-teen. "He was my first love," she said of Matthews. "I got a chance to meet him when I was working at Sirius," she added.
That meeting, however, was apparently more memorable for Glaser than it was for the longtime object of her desire. "I did that, though I didn't really get enough face time with him," she told Forbes of being able to finally meet Matthews. "He didn't really know who I was."
She didn't love being the first celeb voted off Dancing With the Stars
When "Dancing With the Stars" returned with its 27th season in 2018, among the many celebrities set to compete was Nikki Glaser. To say that Glaser's "DWTS" experience did not go well is an understatement; partnered with pro dancer Gleb Savchenko, the two were quickly given the boot, with Glaser the first star eliminated. In her exit interview with "Good Morning America," Glaser shared that an injury she'd suffered during rehearsals had left her in physical pain. "I couldn't even put on a sports bra without crying in agony," she said, admitting she wasn't sure she'd even be able to compete on the show at all. "I thought I was going to have to drop out and then I just willed it to feel better and I was able to dance on Monday and Tuesday," she added. "Now the pain is like kicking back in, you know. It was pure adrenaline, but we danced."
During that interview, she also unveiled some roast jokes she'd written for the "DWTS" judges, including a pointed barb at "DWTS" veteran Len Goodman. "It's really insulting," she joked, "he said I was 'too careful,' which is really insulting coming from a guy who I'm sure wears a Life Alert bracelet."
Looking back on the experience, she jokingly said in Us Weekly, "I got voted off first on 'Dancing With the Stars' in 2018, and it was as humiliating as it sounds."
She had a DWTS showmance with Bobby Bones
Dancing wasn't the only thing that Nikki Glaser was up to during her brief time with "Dancing With the Stars." As she subsequently revealed while appearing on "The Howard Stern Show," she and country music deejay Bobby Bones — who emerged as the season's winner — ended up having a brief romance. "We had to keep it a secret," she said. "We were hooking up, like, lightly," she added, explaining that things never really advanced much beyond making out and some "light petting," because she was still seeing her ex-boyfriend, and wasn't really sure where she saw this new romance heading. According to Glaser, when Bones told her he was falling for her, she decided to cut things off with her ex in order to pursue a relationship with Bones. "And then as soon as I close up the ex-boyfriend thing, guess who doesn't want to hang out with me anymore?" she added.
In a subsequent interview with ET, Bones insisted that Glaser's account was exaggerated. "I don't know if we dated! Here's the thing, Nikki was like, 'Bobby ghosted me.' I was on her radio show two weeks prior to that! There was a little hyperbole there," he said. "But we definitely dated-ish ... She's so full of crap though, in that I ghosted her," he added, pointing to the fact that he brought her back on the show for his final dance.
Nikki Glaser describes herself as a 'bad vegan'
Nikki Glaser has embraced veganism, and has been doing so for some time. Back in 2017, she tweeted, "I am a bad vegan. I eat honey & other sneaky byproducts on the reg, but if u read about what we do to animals, you can be a crap vegan, too!"
Not only does Glaser encourage others to follow her down the vegan path, she's also on a mission to convince her fellow vegans to be able to laugh at themselves. "I'm challenging myself in my next hour of stand-up to find a way to speak about these issues in a way that doesn't make people want to tune me out," she said in a 2020 interview with The Beet.
As she explained, her own veganism came in stages, eliminating certain types of animal-based foods from her diet until eventually going almost purely vegan (although she admitted she still loved cheese). The process, however, had admittedly been a hard road. "It's a sacrifice, albeit a rewarding one," she said, while also confronting the negative perception of vegans held by non-vegans. "But let's be honest with ourselves: People automatically don't like you when you say you're vegan," she said. "I'm getting better about having vegan esteem but it's a struggle."
She's roasted some of the biggest stars in showbiz
Nikki Glaser has been performing stand-up comedy for years, but it's safe to say that it's the hilariously vicious barbs she fires out at celebrity roasts that have really put her on the map. Generally recognized as one of the masters of the roast format, Glaser has shredded some of Hollywood's biggest stars. This list has included Robert DeNiro, Rob Lowe, Caitlyn Jenner, Edward Norton, Alec Baldwin, Martha Stewart, and, in May 2024, NFL great Tom Brady.
While Glaser may seem to be a natural at nastiness, she told Interview that she actually has to place herself in a completely different mindset to write roast jokes, one that celebrates being flat-out mean. In addition, she pointed out just how much work goes into each of those roasts. "It ruins my life for the three weeks I have to get ready for them," she explained.
However, she's kept doing them — despite the grueling workload they entail — because of the massive exposure comedians can receive via celebrity roasts. "Roasts are the biggest platform for a stand-up comedian outside of dating Kim Kardashian," she joked, "so I push myself to have the very best set possible, which means writing every day, performing and refining the jokes every night multiple times, and doing lots of crying in between all of it because I think I'm going to bomb."
She's spent a lot of money on Taylor Swift tickets
Dave Matthews isn't the only musician with whom Nikki Glaser is seriously infatuated. As much as she enjoys Matthews' music, it's small potatoes when compared to her fandom for chart-busting pop phenom Taylor Swift. As she explained on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2024, she decided to spend the $25,000 or so that she would have forked out by freezing her eggs on going to see several shows on Swift's vaunted Eras tour. "I went to see her 12 times in one year," Glaser revealed. Of her Swiftie fandom, she admitted, "It's pretty intense."
On the aforementioned episode of "About Last Night Podcast with Adam Ray," Glaser described encountering people who couldn't really understand her extreme devotion to Swift — until they saw her perform in person themselves. "Do you know how many 'I get it' texts I've gotten from [those] six shows she's done in L.A.? I've gotten probably four or five people going, 'I get it,'" she said.
Glaser also expressed her love of Swift when she dropped by "The Kelly Clarkson Show." "Like, when I'm not on tour, I just, like, go to her tour. It just fills my life up with so much joy," she said. "I did the math and if I had kids, I'd be paying for dance camp and swim lessons," she joked.
Nikki Glaser killed it during Netflix's celebrity roast of Tom Brady
While Nikki Glaser may not enjoy the process of preparing for celebrity roasts, she's darned good at them, something she made abundantly clear when she eviscerated Tom Brady during Netflix's live roast of the former NFL star. "Tom Brady, five-time Super Bowl MVP, most career wins, most career touchdowns, you have seven rings — well, eight now that Gisele gave hers back," Glaser said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer, of Brady's divorce from supermodel Gisele Bündchen. She also joked about his famously strict diet regimen. "But if you follow it exactly as he does, you too can lose your family," she quipped.
Glaser also took a shot at his breakup with "Blue Bloods" star Bridget Moynahan while she was pregnant with his child. "I mean, you retired, then you came back, and then you retired again," Glaser joked. "I get it. It's hard to walk away from something that's not your pregnant girlfriend."
During her aforementioned 2024 "Howard Stern Show" appearance, Glaser unveiled some of the jokes she didn't tell during the event, deeming them to be too mean. "Tom, I love your work — that you've done on your face," she said, reciting one of her cut jokes. "What is happening with your cheeks? You look like a Ken doll that was microwaved. You love deflating things, so stop."