Nikki Glaser Talks First Emmy Nomination, Her Interest In Hosting Awards Shows & Upcoming Prime Video Series ‘Unsettling’
Two months after hitting a career high with her stellar performance on Netflix’s The Roast of Tom Brady, comedian Nikki Glaser’s star continued to rise on Wednesday morning with her first Emmy nomination for Max comedy special Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die.
In conversation with Deadline on nominations morning, Glaser told Deadline about seeing her life change overnight after the Netflix roast, her new series Unsettling in development at Amazon, her interest in hosting awards shows, and more.
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Of Unsettling, which she’ll exec produce and lead opposite fellow comic Jamie Lee, Glaser said, “I just love the people involved with it. They make some of the funniest, [most] heartwarming TV there is, and I’m so excited to move forward with it.”
Glaser added that the show is “slowly coming along, so it seems like it’s something that will be happening, but you never know.” A half-hour, single-camera comedy about two childless best friends in their 30s who decide to “go in” on a baby together, navigating their lives as brand new platonic co-parents, the show hails from Warner Bros. TV, Bill Lawrence’s Doozer Productions, and Amazon MGM Studios.
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When asked what she thought resonated about her new comedy special — her second for Max on the heels of 2022’s Good Clean Filth — she called the hour “a culmination of a 20-year career, just me being at the top of my game and definitely knowing what my voice is.”
Receiving an Emmy nomination for the special, she said, “is the kind of thing that’s a big moment for an artist, just because I’ll always get to be Emmy-nominated Nikki Glaser now. It’s like you have that title for the rest of your life, so they can’t take that away from me.”
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Also, Glaser said, “I’m just excited to go to the Emmys. I love going to awards shows. It’s one of my favorite things to do as a person in this business.”
One might wonder, given her passion for awards shows, whether she’d ever consider hosting the likes of the Academy Awards or Golden Globes, having previously been tapped to host the inaugural MTV Movie & TV Awards in 2021.
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“I think [hosting is] honestly something that I’ll be doing a lot of in my future, just because it’s something that falls into the same kind of category as the roast, where you have this prepared monologue and there’s a lot of pressure on,” Glaser shared. “I really thrive in those kinds of settings, where you’re in front of an audience of people in show business and you have to do a really tight, perfect, tonally perfect and funny monologue. I would love to do it, and I think that my name is being tossed around in those kinds of conversations, but we’ll see.”
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Unlike many of her fellow comics, who have increasingly shied away from awards show hosting under the belief that it’s a thankless job, Glaser isn’t afraid of the challenge. “I run at the chance to do things that generally would scare other people,” she said. “I think that stand-up and roasting are both categories of entertainment that other people in the business are like, ‘I wouldn’t touch that.’ And thankfully I don’t have that aversion to it.”
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Certainly, she clarified, “I get nerves and things like that, but I truly run towards things that other celebrities find just terrifying, and I’m grateful that I don’t have that fear in me that would make me say no to those things.”
It’s a good thing she doesn’t, as her gifts at roasting and stand-up more broadly have now brought her to a place of international recognition, the effects of which are palpably felt. After the Tom Brady roast, she said, she had “more followers instantly. Just more recognizability. Chefs sending…food to my table, coming out to meet me.”
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Where she’s seen the biggest and most impactful bump, she said, is in her touring. “I was already doing so well, better than I’d ever thought [I would] and just really feeling grateful for where I was at,” she noted, “and now it’s just adding shows, and I don’t really need to promote shows as much. They’re just selling out.”
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So, what will Glaser do with this newfound heat? Certainly, she said, “Everyone’s looking to me like, what do you want to do? We can kind of make it happen.” But at the same time, she can’t say she’s not happy with the life she has, just as it is right now.
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“I would like to have make a movie and be in a rom-com at some point. I would like to act alongside Julie Louis-Dreyfus. At one point, I would like to host SNL; I would like to host an award show. I would like to sit in the VIP box at a Taylor Swift concert,” Glaser shared. “I mean, there’s little goals here and there, but I really am just happy with how things are, and that’s been the greatest realization is, I honestly want more free time with my family and friends and my dog. I’m so new to this idea that I get to choose what I want to do, and I’m still trying to navigate that.”
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The “only downside” of leveling up in her career in comedy, Glaser said, is that she’ll now be expected to “step it up and put out even better product” than ever before. Still, she said, “those are the kind of things that make me work hard. It’s just the pressure and expectations, so I kind of welcome it.”
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Premiering on Max in May, Glaser’s Someday You’ll Die sees her delve into a wide range of topics including why she doesn’t want kids, the harsh realities of aging, her sexual fantasies and more. The special is her fourth in all, on the heels of Good Clean Filth (Max), Bangin’ (Netflix) and Perfect (Comedy Central). Seeing the special nominated in the categories of Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) and Outstanding Picture Editing For Variety Programming, she’ll compete in the former with giants including Billy Joel (Billy Joel: The 100th – Live At Madison Square Garden), Dave Chappelle (Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer), Dick Van Dyke (Dick Van Dyke 98 Years Of Magic) and Trevor Noah (Trevor Noah: Where Was I).
This year’s Primetime Emmys are set to take place at the Peacock Theater downtown on September 15.
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