In Nikki Glaser’s Emmy-nominated HBO stand-up comedy special, “Someday You’ll Die,” she explains that she’s been suffering from postpartum depression: “My friend just had a baby, and I’ve been mourning the loss of that friendship.” She talks about the time she got an Easy-Bake Oven as a child: “I stuck my head in it.” She details her specific tastes in porn and her boyfriend’s willingness to bring them to life.
For one hour, she works dark and blue, tapping into a personal vein of comedy that leaves her vulnerability bare. Glaser, nominated for best variety special, is embracing what might be described as her arrival at peak comedy truth-telling. Her recent work has an implicit message: This is who I am.
Deal with it. “If I gave a f—, it would mean that I have some kind of shame around the things I think,” she said in a recent video interview from her home in St. Louis.
“I did a lot of work internally to be like, ‘OK, there’s really nothing wrong with what I’m saying.’ I don’t want kids. I don’t understand why people have them.
I do sometimes have suicidal thoughts, and that doesn’t make me a bad person. And it doesn’t make me bad to say that I have ’em.” In May, the same month that “Someday You’ll Die” premiered, Glaser sent a roomful of comedy colleagues and professional athletes into stitches with her set at Netflix’s “Roast of Tom Brady,” in which she flame-broiled everyone from the legendary NFL quarterback to.