Nikki Glaser Came Prepared

In an interview she gave prior to hosting last night’s Golden Globes ceremony, the comedian Nikki Glaser explained how she prepared for the job. She put together two writers’ rooms and did more than 90 test runs. She debated the meanness of punchlines. She fought with her boyfriend (who is also her producer) over whether the actor Jesse Eisenberg or the podcast “Call Her Daddy” would be better recognized by the stars in the room.

Her efforts paid off. Glaser’s 10 minutes on stage to start the evening ran smoothly, clearing the exceptionally low bar set by last year’s emcee, Jo Koy. She immediately—and frequently—made herself the butt of the joke, putting the audience at ease. The attendees received her warmly as she made light of how no one watches Peacock, how movie stars now dominate television, and how poorly Joker: Folie à Deux fared with critics. These cracks were about as exciting as the fun facts about presenters that popped up on chyrons as they walked on stage, which is to say: They were perfectly nice, but nowhere near groundbreaking.

And yet, Glaser’s good-natured delivery turned out to be the ideal vehicle for some unexpected bite as well—but only if you listened carefully. In between her many, many self-effacing barbs, Glaser slid in some stingers about the guests seated before her. Early in her set, she targeted their egos and political endorsements. “You’re all so famous, so talented, so powerful, I mean, you could really do anything,” she gushed. “I mean, except tell the country who to vote for.” Later, she used their camera-readiness against themselves. “I look out and I see some of the hardest working actors in show business, and by that I mean your servers,” she said, as the attendees started applauding for the waitstaff. It was the exact reaction Glaser seemed to have wanted. “Yes, give it up,” she said, smiling. “They’ll be bringing you your cocktails to drink and your food that you’ll look at.” The comedian’s rapid-fire delivery kept the audience from pausing to consider what exactly they were clapping for, and her cheerful demeanor masked her humor’s acidity.

Glaser has a knack for jovially delivering harsh truths, as if she’s sharing a little harmless gossip. It’s why her roast of Tom Brady—a performance that earned the appreciation of fellow comics and catapulted her into the upper echelon of today’s roastmasters—worked so well; she killed him with kindness, beaming her way through every insult about his personal life, his career, and his legacy. She did a muted version of the same approach at the Globes, singling people out with lighter, but no less backhanded one-liners that made them smile anyway. Just watch how she made Benny Blanco, Selena Gomez’s fiancé, laugh after saying he was only present “because of the genie who granted him that wish.” She grinned at Gomez and Blanco before adding a quick “I love you” to soften the blow. She also slipped in a remark about women considered past their Hollywood primes (“It turns out if you’re a woman over 50 in a lead role, they call it a comeback; if you’re a guy over 50 in a lead role, congratulations, you’re about to play Sydney Sweeney’s boyfriend”) in the middle of an extended gag in which she treated the evening’s halfway point as if it were halftime at a sporting event. (The bit even came complete with a list of the most thanked people during the night’s acceptance speeches, including Mario Lopez but not, Glaser noted, God. “No surprise in this godless town,” she quipped.)

While developing her own routine, Glaser said that she rewatched clips of past Golden Globes hosts she admired, including Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. That experience may have informed one of her monologue’s last jokes, which was significantly sharper than her others: “I predict five years from now, when you’re watching old clips of this show on YouTube, you’ll see someone in one of the crowd shots and you’ll go, ‘Oh my God, that was before they caught that guy!’” she said. “Like, we could be making history tonight, and like, we don’t even know with who!” As the audience laughed heartily at her sorority-girlish excitement, Glaser landed her punchline. “He knows, you know. Or she, it could be a woman. I think 100 percent of the time it’s a man, but it could be a woman. It won’t be. It never is.” The casual delivery, the tossed-off tone—Glaser made these lines, about how scandal-prone Hollywood can be, sound like she just thought of them, like she’s just making random observations. She’s just saying.

But of course, nothing Glaser did at the Globes was offhand. She studied her predecessors, tested her material, and even created bits—including singing a song involving a silly pun on Conclave and Wicked—that offered classic awards-show humor. Most of all, she calibrated her meanness, bringing an understated sort of savagery as the night’s emcee. Glaser promised she wouldn’t roast the people in the room, and it’s true: On that front, she was innocent. But that didn’t mean she was entirely innocuous.