“We come together tonight with a common goal.”

To comedian Nikki Glaser, this was a great premise in search of a better punchline.

Over Zoom, three days after nominations for the Golden Globes were announced last month, she invited ideas from her staff of 10 writers for the opening monologue that she will deliver as the host on Sunday. She and the writers were also together for a common goal, finding something funnier than: “To get out of here before Dax Shepard asked you to do his podcast.”

Glaser, 40, liked the joke but thought it was too wordy. And maybe, she said, it could be harsher. One writer, Sean O’Connor, suggested: “Getting out without having a conversation with Jesse Eisenberg.”

She smiled and said they could think more out of the box.

“Leave before Harrison Ford snaps at you.”

“See if they can parlay a Golden Globes win into an appearance on ‘Hot Ones.’”

Glaser considered each punchline politely, patiently responding to every one. She described this as the honeymoon period: Every joke seemed fun and new. She told the group they were on pace to make a great set.

Riding high after her acclaimed performance at the Tom Brady roast streamed live on Netflix in May, Glaser is transitioning from star comic to head of a comedy operation. “Nikki World,” one writer called it.

As she explained, “I used to feel like I need a hand in every joke I tell, but I now know that part of my talent is curating and knowing what works with my delivery.”

Jason Zinoman Steps Into Nikki World

I spent close to a month in Nikki World, observing how her team develops and hones an awards show monologue. Later, she spelled out to me how she expected the month before the ceremony to go: She would do the set in clubs every night multiple times, shed a few tears, get bored with her jokes, get worse at delivering them, and then a few days before the Globes, have a panic attack. “I know myself,” she said. That prediction wasn’t entirely borne out (no tears), but she was close.

What remained consistent throughout was Glaser’s stubborn commitment to high standards in getting laughs. “We have five really good jokes,” she told her staff before a slight deepening of her voice and the familiar pivot of a veteran comic: “Aim to beat them all.”

Glaser’s lodestars are Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who together hosted the Golden Globes four times. When in a rut, she binges Fey’s sitcom “30 Rock.”

“Last night Chris and I got in a big fight and then watched Tina and Amy’s monologues again,” she told her staff, referring to her producer and boyfriend, Chris Convy, who has been at her side throughout the process.

Glaser advised her writers to study those monologues and took a moment to marvel at Fey starting her 2015 Globes gig by saying: “Welcome, you bunch of despicable, spoiled, minimally talented brats.”

“That’s the tone I like where there’s an everyman aspect,” she told her writers. Smiling, she reflected more: “I couldn’t go that hard.”

That might surprise some. This is the comedian whose Brady roast set was so pointed that it made a quarterback who had taken punishing hits for decades say these shots hurt enough that he wouldn’t do it again.

Award Monologues Appeal to Two Different Audiences

The obstacle course of awards show monologues involves navigating two very different audiences: the people watching at home and the stars in the room. Some comics focus on one or the other, but Glaser said it was crucial to “split the difference.”

Glaser faces a showbiz paradox: She must ingratiate herself with the stars in front of her, but the reason she was chosen for the job was that she had brutalized the stars in front of her. “No one is going to do a better roast set than that,” Conan O’Brien said on his podcast after the Brady event.

“I implemented a system for the roast,” Glaser explained, and that process, Convy said, is her blueprint. She meets daily with an inner circle of writers (O’Connor, Convy, Mike Gibbons and Brian Frange) to go over the set and three or four times a week with a larger group of writers. Add a writer’s assistant and publicists, and you have an organization with the scale of a late-night show.

Five days later, Convy was sitting in the back of the Comedy Cellar in New York City, watching Glaser test new jokes about “Wicked.” She held her phone in one hand as she went through the set at a quick pace. “‘Wicked’ proved that we love musicals about the origin story of a villain who wears a lot of makeup,” she said, adding: “‘Joker 2’ proved that we also hate those same types of musicals.”

A smattering of laughs. Convy typed on his phone: “Joker 2: Lukewarm.”

Afterward, Glaser sat down with Convy and two writers, and her tone immediately shifted from performative charm to brass-tacks postgaming. “The Zendaya joke needs more,” she said, looking at her phone to remind her of jokes, sighing that the opening still wasn’t there. An Ozempic joke was better than the response it received, Glaser insisted, blaming the way she stumbled over a previous line.

Glaser suggests a new way to go at “Wicked” and the “Joker” sequel before concluding, “It’s not funny. It’s just clever.”

One week before the ceremony, Glaser sounded confident, tired and a little frustrated. She performed the monologue every night in December except Christmas and one other day due to sickness. “I can’t wait for this to be over,” she said wearily.

The honeymoon was over. Asked if the current set beats the jokes at the writers room meeting in early December, she said they were 70% better.

Foremost among the bothersome spots were the “Wicked” jokes. The “Wicked” and “Joker 2” lines had somehow made their way back in, but in an entirely new form. There were two punchline options: one succinct, the other verbose. There was a joke about Jeff Goldblum, a star of “Wicked,” not being a good singer that she liked but that just couldn’t get a laugh.

Late in the afternoon on New Year’s Day, after performing at four clubs the night before, Glaser sounded different than I had heard before. She had been cutting chunks of the set and now there were “flow issues.” The set wasn’t “singing,” she told me by phone.

This wasn’t exactly the panic attack she had predicted. But Glaser said she had performed the jokes at clubs so often (91 times before the ceremony) that she could no longer tell if they were funny. How could she? She knew every surprise coming.

She had watched awards show monologues that had been forgotten, she said, then added that she had standup dates lined up for next year, almost as if she had worked past the catastrophizing phase into the moving-on one. Glaser then said something that took me by surprise: “There’s no way I’m going to bomb. There’s just no way.”

Confidence is a funny thing. It can change not only night to night, but moment to moment. When Glaser got in trouble with hers, she returned to Fey and Poehler.

What reassures her, she said, is the same crisis that occurred before the roast. She grew tired of her own jokes. Just doing it for real, the performance, saved her. “You have to fake it at first a little bit,” she said of her enthusiasm for familiar punchlines.

Glaser compared the feeling of the performance, the final time you tell familiar jokes, to the last time you talk to a boyfriend after a breakup. “Even though you may be tired of them, you get something back in that last goodbye because you are so in the moment,” she said, adding with a hopeful lilt in her voice. “It’ll feel new again.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jason Zinoman/Hailey Heaton
c. 2025 The New York Times Company