The comic is hosting the Golden Globes this Sunday. She spoke with Terry Gross back in July about roasts, hurt feelings, and just wanting to be liked. Her latest HBO comedy special is Someday You'll Die.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're continuing our end-of-the-year series featuring a few of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed. Today, it's comic Nikki Glaser. She's hosting the Golden Globes on Sunday, and her latest comedy special called Someday You'll Die is nominated for a Globe.
She's also currently nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album and a Critics' Choice TV Award for Best Comedy Special. When I spoke with her in July, I had to figure out how I was going to talk with her because a lot of her comedy is about sex in pretty explicit language that we cannot use in a broadcast. One of her comedy specials is called Good Clean Filth.
She says that she talks about her privates so much she thinks of them as her publics. That part of her comedy is about the pleasures, insecurities, embarrassments, and absurdities involved with sex.
In Someday You'll Die, she also talks about why she doesn't want to have children, her thoughts on monogamy, her experiences with depression and suicidal thinking, getting older, she's 40, and how comics are often afraid of getting canceled. I think she's really funny.
Watching her work, I'm fascinated by how she often walks the line between incredibly perceptive and potentially tasteless or offensive. Sometimes, as I laugh out loud, I start wondering, is it okay to laugh at this? That's especially true when she's featured at a celebrity roast, walking the line between hilarious and maybe a little too personal or a little too cruel.
She made headlines in May at the roast of Tom Brady. Other people she's roasted include Rob Lowe, Alec Baldwin, and Bruce Willis. She's been a contestant on reality shows, including Dancing with the Stars, and hosted reality shows, including FBoy Island and the sequel, Lovers and Liars. Someday You'll Die is streaming on multiple platforms.
Note to parents, this interview isn't explicit about sex, but we do have an adult conversation. Nikki Glaser, welcome to Fresh Air. You know, one of the things I really like about your comedy is it gets me to ask myself, where is the line between hilarious and tasteless or hilarious and maybe a little cruel? Do you wonder where the line is between tasteless and cruel?
Do you want me to be thinking about that when I listen to your comedy?
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