Nikki Glaser, the hardest working quipster in stand-up and reality TV, is bringing her gymnastic wit to a night of laughs at 713 Music Hall on Sunday, April 14 – a venue she liked so much, she made sure to play it again after killing there in 2022.
“I always have a good time when I come to Houston,” the busy comic says flatteringly. “The crowds are always cool and ready to party. It feels like an elevated Florida! Like the best crowds comedically are Texas and Florida, I think. They don’t get offended, and Houston is a really happening city right now. You just feel that vibe when you are there: I’m somewhere important, this show is important and the people are culturally hip here.”
Glaser seems joyous to be on the road and playing with new material nightly after dropping a successful HBO stand-up special Good Clean Filth a few years back.
And the no-holds-barred comic has plenty to discuss: “I am talking about my ten year relationship that’s been on and off for those ten years, and the prospect of settling down forever. I talk about being in my late 30s – my latest thirty – and how that is effecting my life as I’m starting to age and seeing the signs of an imminent wrinkly kinda grotesque face. How aging is unavoidable and also, fertility and the choice to have kids.”
While her comedy may be personal, Glaser is quick to argue that the material has universal appeal. “I think I deal with a lot of subjects women would relate to because I am someone who is living a female experience. Mainly, I have a very masculine sense of humor about female topics. I think it’s a good mix. Its not all women in my shows, not all men, there seems to something for everyone even if I am talking about something very specific to women’s experience. I am presenting it in a way intentionally that I think men can find humor in it too, because the worst thing is when you see a comic that’s just appealing to a certain group of people and tries to purposely alienate another group or just make fun of them.
"I’m not like a man-hater type comedian. But I’m also not a comedian who throws women under the bus either, I love being a women – but I’ve got some complaints about it.”
For some, the last year before hitting that big 4-0 might be stressful, but Glaser seems to be leaning into the upsides. “As always with my comedy,” she says, “I think as I get older, that’s one of the only joys - but you care less what people think. I think I am starting to feel that. As a comedian, I’ve always come at this as I can talk about things that other people can’t, or feel embarrassed to talk about. It’s always been my strong suit, even when I was young.”
Jerry Seinfeld once joked that a comedian’s years in the stand-up game often equates to their maturity level in life. If this is true, that Nikki Glaser is finally ready for a drink!
“I think it really does take about ten years for a comedian to find their voice,” she states. “I’m 21 years in now. Some get there sooner. But for a comedian to really arrive at feeling comfortable on stage in a way that is authentic to the way they are, that’s about ten years. Some never get to it. Around ten years [for me], that’s when something really clicked where I was like: instead of emulating other comedians I want to be like, what happens if I say what I feel?”
She continues, digging into the comic’s internal thought process. “Comedians, I don’t think anyone is going to be shocked to find out that we’re deeply insecure people,” Glaser laughs. “It is hard for us to be authentic, even though it seems like we’re being authentic all the time. So I really love when I uncover a new thing that I haven’t found a way to talk about on stage, or that I thought I would never tell anyone. Then I’m saying it into a microphone. That’s been the way my whole life. Every year, I say something that I truly think the year before that this is my threshold. I will never admit this. Really that’s the only way to get over things is to be honest about them. So it’s really helped me to heal a lot of things.”
While revealing her deepest feels onstage can be exhilarating, it’s not without risk. “It’s also scary,” she contends upon a moment of reflection. “If my brain is telling me I shouldn’t say this, its not that I’m saying this offend people or push the boundaries and upset people, but that’s always an indicator that you need to find a way. That’s how I operate my whole life: if something scares you, you need to say yes. Not if you’re going to die, okay, don’t do it. But if you are scared you are going to embarrassed, that’s not good enough. You have to say it.”
To give an example, Glaser gives a peek behind an on stage moment with a new bit from a recent set.
“Last week, I said some joke onstage about going to the bathroom hastily so people think you peed and nothing else, and how things go wrong when that happens! Like you go back to the group of people you are with and like, is there something on my wrist or something? I made some joke about having poop on my wrist and people laughed in a way that made me say ‘Thank God!’
"Obviously I’m exaggerating with the wrist but I was making fun of something that has happened to a lot of us, where you just think it is on you at some point, and it could be. And the way they laughed, I had to stop the show and say ‘Thank you so much for laughing at that because I took a chance that you also had poop on your wrist and you could have really left me hanging. Girl that’s just you!’ and sometimes that does happen. But I really felt an immense closeness with that crowd because we all just admitted – them by the laughter and me by the literally saying it, that sometimes we fear we have poop on our wrists.”
A valuable lesson, wrapped up in a tiny dirty bow. For audiences jazzed to see Glaser in a setting beyond the streaming screen, it turns out these revelations on stage are common for her. Her set is anything but set. “I don’t like have a set list that doesn’t change for every city,” she says emphatically. “I don’t like having a routine. There’s no ‘this is the way I do it every night, this is the way I tell the joke.’ I enjoy my show because I get to be free in it. I am not constrained to memorizing the lines or the order I say them in. Filming a special is really hard for me, because I actually have to commit to a ‘best order’ for this. I work so from shooting from the hip.I have things I want to get to because there are jokes that I’m excited about, but I generally mix it up a lot.”
“When I’m really vibing with a crowd, I can’t help but feel comfortable to try things maybe I’ve tried once or I just read in the wings on little things I’ve jotted down, just to put them in my head. If they come up on stage I can kind of expound on them and can kind of figure out some stuff. But I would say half of the time I’ll say things on stage that I’ve have to shout to my tour manager to ‘write this down’ because I will come up with some magic that I’ll forget by the time I’m off the stage.”
It’s an interesting insight, as writing practices vary wildly from comic to comic. In some ways, it appears Glaser has the perfect system: find the premise while living life and then build the bit with the laughter of the crowd. “That’s how I write most of my material,” she agrees, “just riffing on a subject matter on stage. People are always impressed by that, but that’s what writing is. It’s riffing. So its either me riffing in a coffee shop on a subject, or me just talking about it on stage where I feel really empowered to try stuff, be expressive and acts out things I wouldn’t normally. So it’s just a different version of writing. Sometimes you stumble on it and that jokes comes out on stage and you will never ever change it, it just comes out perfect. That’s my favorite. That’s the best feeling in comedy.”
In her two decades plus as a professional comedian, much as changed about the world entertainers inhabit. Glaser is a good example of that evolution, starting off in the world of late night talk shows and evolving through the world of podcasts and Instagram Lives and making frequent appearances in reality show settings like The Masked Singer, Selling Sunset and her own series Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?
However, at the core of the comedian’s job: the stage, the microphone and the audience – evolution in stand-up is an impossibility. So, has Glaser’s job gotten as the industry has gone through such upheaval? “I don’t think so,” the comic starts. “We’ve always looked to comedians to say the things we were too scared to say. To synthesize and articulate anger that we are feeling that may be subconscious and have not been able to articulate in the same way. I think that is still our job. We are just more exposed to people with TikTok and Instagram and you’re just seeing stand-up comedy a lot more. But I think it still serves the same purpose: to make people laugh.”
Diving deeper, Glaser unpacks some small differences. “There is more of a line you can cross now, and everyone is so afraid of being cancelled, but at the same time, comedy has gotten a lot edgier than it was in the '90s and early 2000s. There is stuff you can do in the right circumstances that you couldn’t have done then. Also, it was about making an ‘act’ when I started. It was about who does the industry want me to be? What is my act that can be turned into a sitcom? What’s my Seinfeld? If I were to have a show like Seinfeld, and my stand up was the beginning of each episode, what would that episode look like? You were operating from that place of: Where is this leading to? Will people like this person? Stand ups aren’t that likeable. We’re cynical little curmudgeonly, we’re judgmental by the nature of what we do.”
“I think it’s nice that we’ve been able to be less likable, and as a woman especially, it’s hard to lean into that sometimes because what we are in media sometimes is we are pretty and likable. And I still want to be those things desperately! But I do think that podcasts have made comedy fans want it to sound real. They want it to sound conversational. And people like Louis C.K., and Bill Burr and Chappelle have all dabbled in a new kind of honesty. And mainly Louis, I think was the first time I saw that – like calling your kids assholes, I think that he was the first. Now you’ll hear that nine times at any given open mic around the country. That was a revolutionary statement.
Summing up her thoughts, Glaser stumbles on something profound in the shift from the brick wall world of the '90s on cable to the now immersive world of personality-driven comedy available on streaming options. “People are expecting authenticity and that’s also due to TikTok and Instagram,” she says. “Things just don’t look that shiny anymore. People want to see the insides of people’s homes. People want to see them without make up. We’re just primed now to expect that from our entertainment. We want realness. Well, realness in front of a ring light.”
Nikki Glaser’s performance is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 14 at 713 Music Hall, 401 Franklin, Suit 1600. For more information, visit 713musichall.com. $43-146
