When Nikki Glaser steps on to the stage on Monday (AEST) to host the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, she will be making history for a second time.
The stand-up comic turned actress and TV host made Globes history last year when she became the first woman to host the awards solo.
Now, as the eyes of the world settle on her once more, let’s take a look at her rise to stardom and the controversies she has encountered along the way – including the comments about Taylor Swift that sparked a grovelling apology.
Glaser was born on June 1, 1984, in the US state of Ohio, but spent most of her childhood in Missouri, where she was raised by her parents alongside one sister.
After school she briefly attended the University of Colorado Boulder before moving to the University of Kansas to study English literature.
It was during her first year at college that she started dabbling in comedy, performing her first stand-up gig at 18 using jokes she had written about her peers.
She once recalled her earliest inspiration was Sarah Silverman.
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Glaser honed her skills at open-mic nights in Kansas City before her big break came when she landed an audition for the reality TV show Last Comic Standing.
She appeared first on the 2006 season of the show, while still at college, and made it to the semi-finals.
She returned for the 2010 season.
The show got the attention of the comedy industry and she was invited to perform the prized stand-up segments on late-night shows such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
She also took to the airwaves, co-hosting a podcast with fellow comedian Sara Schaefer from 2011 to 2014 called You Had To Be There.
In 2013, she and Schaefer began hosting a weekly TV show, Nikki & Sara Live, which ran for two seasons.
She also dabbled in acting, with roles in TV and films, including the 2015 Amy Schumer hit film Trainwreck, and Schumer’s 2018 movie, I Feel Pretty. That year she competed in the US version of Dancing with the Stars.
In 2016, Glaser was chosen for Comedy Central’s Roast of Rob Lowe then two years later a roast for Bruce Willis.
That year, she appeared in her own stand-up special, Perfect, which aired on the US cable TV comedy channel. Her second special, Bangin’, premiered on Netflix in 2019.
In 2024, she was one of the comedians invited to perform at The Roast of Tom Brady.
Then last year came her record-breaking turn as host of the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, which was followed by one of the most coveted jobs in comedy – as guest host of Saturday Night Live, although many of her jokes fell short.
Glaser is known for her dark and sexually-charged subject matter, which many detractors say goes too far.
Critics say her jokes about sexual assault, sex trafficking, and paedophilia, and in particular sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, go too far.
But Glaser knows there is a fine line when it comes to joking about these matters, and in particular, Hollywood’s most-loved celebrities.
In the lead-up to the history-making Golden Globe Awards in 2025, when she became the first woman to host the show solo, she told Jimmy Kimmel it was a “delicate balance”.
She said unlike during the roasts she has performed, celebrities in the crowd were not paying her thousands of dollars to be made fun of.
“I’ll give the audience at home what they want,” she said on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“But the audience at home is not gonna laugh if I bomb in the room.”
At the awards show last year, Glaser ended up including jokes about Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was convicted of prostitution-related offences, and alleged murderer Luigi Mangione, but steered clear of upsetting celebrities in the room.
This year it appears she will go down a similar route, having already decided to steer clear from jokes about ‘America’s Sweetheart’, Julia Roberts.
Glaser is currently testing out jokes she is planning to use in her opening monologue by doing stand-up in Los Angeles, and said anything about Roberts is falling flat with audience members.
She told Gayle King for CBS Mornings this week, ”I’m trying out my monologue around LA at the clubs here and just even any joke about Julia Roberts, they are not there for.
“You cannot make fun of ‘America’s Sweetheart’.
“So… whatever I end up saying about her, that is the most fine-tuned joke that I’ve worked on so hard, because it is very delicate.
“I mean, they were booing, and I was like, ‘Is she here?’ I mean, it’s insane.”
It could well be a case of once bitten twice shy, with Glaser already earning the wrath of Swifties after she was seen to go after musical superstar Taylor Swift.
Glaser’s voice was included in a slip from Swift’s 2020 doco-style film Miss Americana as part of a montage of celebrities saying less than kind things about the star.
In the clip, Glaser says Swift is “too skinny”, which “bothers me”.
By the time the film came out, Glaser was sorry she had made the comments five years earlier and wanted to apologise to the star, which she eventually managed to do in a public post on Instagram.
“I love @taylorswift,” Glaser wrote after the film’s premiere.
“Unfortunately, I am featured in her new documentary as part of a montage of asshats saying mean things about her, which is used to explain why she felt the need to escape from the spotlight for a year.
“It’s insanely ironic because anyone who knows me knows I’m obnoxiously obsessed with her and her music.
“The sound bite was from an interview I did five years ago and I say in SUCH a shitty tone, ‘She’s too skinny; it bothers me… all of her model friends, and it’s just like, c’mon!’.
“This quote should be used as an example of ‘projection’ in PSYCH101 textbooks. If you’re familiar with my ‘work’ at all, you know I talk openly about battling some kind of eating disorder for the past 17 years.
“I was probably ‘feeling fat’ that day and was jealous… And I was only bothered by her model friends because I’d like to be her friend, and I’m not a model.”
Swift accepted the apology, writing, “Wow. I appreciate this so much. One of the major themes of the doc is that we have the ability to change our opinions over time, to grow, to learn about ourselves. I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve struggled with some of the same things I’ve struggled with. Sending a massive hug.”
In 2025, Glaser was nominated for a swag of awards for her 2024 comedy special, Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die, including a Critics’ Choice Television Award, Golden Globe, Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Writer’s Guild of America Award, the latter of which she won.
Glaser was reportedly paid $600,000 for last year’s Golden Globes hosting gig, bringing her net worth to about $14 million.
Much of her wealth comes from her stand-up comedy career, which brought her to Australia for the first time in 2025.
Glaser, 41, has been in an on-off relationship with TV producer Chris Convy since 2013.
They met when he produced her TV show Nikki & Sara Live.
He was the butt of one of her off-colour jokes during the Tom Brady roast, saying that while “he’s the love of my life”, she would shoot him in the face if it meant she was free to perform a sex act with the former NFL star.
Glaser, who gave up alcohol in 2021, does not have children – something she has addressed recently.
During a 2024 appearance on the US Today show, she said she was quite sure she didn’t want kids but had not frozen her eggs as she felt like “I can always adopt” if she changed her mind.
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