In the past few years, the comedian Nikki Glaser has breathed new life into the well-worn comedic form of the roast. Last year, she performed a roast of the football legend Tom Brady for a Netflix special, to much acclaim—with Conan O’Brien opining that “no one is going to do a better roast set than that.” Glaser has been on a hot streak since then, hosting the Golden Globes in January and touring the country with a new show. But rising to the top of the comedy world, Glaser tells David Remnick, hasn’t settled her insecurities, or her impostor syndrome. “It just never goes away— that feeling of not being worthy, or being thought of as less than,” Glaser says. It’s why, as Remnick notes, she insists on leading her set with a joke right out of the gate. “Part of it is I just know that people think women aren’t as funny, so I have to prove it right away . . . and then, ‘Can we all just relax and you can trust me?’ ”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.
What is the significance of Nikki Glaser's roast of Tom Brady?
Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin.
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So in an earlier part of your life, and I hate this phrase, but you would take the edge off by drinking. You quit drinking. How do you relieve things now?
Um, I say, I text my friends and my boyfriend and my, and I say, I really say crazy things. I think drinking or whatever I would do to self-soothe that anxiety or that self-hatred to make that voice go away. It's not there anymore. I don't have that. So I just let that voice rage. And I just say crazy stuff about myself. And I just like bully myself like it.
You know, a lot of sometimes my self-hatred has to do with my looks because it's not really about my looks, but it's just something I can focus on. And so I will, like, Photoshop things to prove to my friends, like, I am ugly. Look how much I look like this person. I'll do, like, side by sides.
Well, just recently you put some photographs out. How did that happen?
Oh, yeah.
That—okay, this is— Explain what I'm talking about.
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