Nikki Glaser on Feeling ‘Deeply Unlovable,’ Her Addiction to Approval and Burning Desire to Host ‘SNL’

It may have only been nine minutes in a two-decade comedy career, but it was one that had all eyes on Nikki Glaser in a very good, pivotal way. Her set roasting Tom Brady in May was hailed by just about everybody watching both at home and in the audience, an experience she said is never going to happen to her again. And while in the moment it looked effortless and as if she was as calm as a cucumber, inside, her motor was racing.

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“I know this is going well, but ride this wave. And you can’t relax. I can’t celebrate anything until it’s officially over,” her head was telling her as she whipped out one razor-sharp quip after another during Netflix’s “The Roast of Tom Brady.”

“You have this really short amount of time where you have to be excellent, and there is no room for error because it’s live. And just the amount of eyes on you, the amount of detail there was involved in each joke. It felt like a balance beam routine, honestly. As soon as I stuck the landing and finished it and walked back to my seat, then I just felt like it was a dream.”

Her name was immediately buzzed about, and people became aware of her who weren’t aware before. And, as luck would have it, within days, she hit the bullseye for a second time — her HBO comedy special, “Someday You’ll Die,” was released and was another huge hit. The back-to-back accolades could not have been timed better, which Glaser says, came after “tons of feeling mediocre.”

That feeling of just being so-so is nothing new for the comedian, who says self-doubt is a demon she constantly faces. “Even though all I crave and want is attention and all those things, when I get it, I kind of cower and need to undermine myself and create all the reasons why I don’t deserve this,” she confesses. Her usual pattern, she says, is for a couple days, she’s uncomfortable with people liking her and thinks, “I must have done something sneaky to get this, and how can I prove to myself I don’t deserve this?”

“Comedians don’t operate from a place of ‘I’m amazing. Look at me!’ It’s more like, ‘Am I amazing? Will you look at me? And when you do, do I really deserve it?’” says Glaser. “It’s just never happened to me where something has been that critically and societally accepted and celebrated like this.” But she has finally let it sink in and is enjoying it — “but not too much, because it goes away. And I don’t want to ever base my happiness around if people are recognizing me at Starbucks or not.”

On the flip side, she knows herself well enough to say without hesitation that making people laugh makes her “feel less alone.”

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“I mean [comedians] like laughs because it’s love, and it’s approval. We are addicted to the approval.”

In “Someday You’ll Die,” which was just nominated for a 2024 Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded), Glaser touches on some very serious topics, including abortion and suicide. The comic notes she’s always had kind of a dark personality, “thought weird things” and suffered with depression, but always felt like she had to hide that side of her. “But comedy has just allowed me to amplify those parts of myself, and while people are either laughing at me or with me, I’m getting some kind of approval for how different and unlovable I feel quite often, to be honest. I think at my core, I feel deeply unlovable, and I just get little hits of love when I get those laughs.”

Yes, she’s had an unbelievable few months, but there is one other thing that would be the cherry on the cake of her career: hosting “Saturday Night Live.”

“I have loved the show forever and admire the cast that they have now. I’m not waiting for the call, but when it comes in, it’ll be an absolute yes! ” she says. “It’s like you’re dying for the call, but you’re also like, ‘Please don’t call me because I know that my life will become so hard.’ But, you know, that’s what this career is. It’s just a series of hard things.”

Lorne Michaels, are you listening?

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