Nikki Glaser Wants to Host Oscars (or Anything), Has Backup Plan If She Gets Canceled

“I’m not scared of difficult gigs,” Glaser said in a new interview with TheWrap. And she’s not just talking about roasting celebrities, either. Glaser has her eye on a bigger prize.

As awards shows make headlines more and more often for the comedians who don’t want the job, Glaser said, “I think I would do a really good job, so I can’t wait to host something. I think it’s imminent.”

Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the Oscars in 2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024, has already said he’s not interested in helming the show again this year, saying it was “too much last year,” during a recent appearance on the Politickin’ podcast.

According to Kimmel, it’s about time management and balance, which he said he’s not great at. “I’m all in when it comes to something like the Oscars. I think about it in the morning and at night, and when I have ideas I want to work on them, and then my nightly show seems like a nuisance.”

But it can also be a potential career “nuisance,” as Jo Koy found out with his poorly-received hosting performance at the Golden Globes earlier this year. But Glaser is ready for that, too, quipping that she’s already got a backup plan if she gets canceled.

Calling roasts “draining and exhausting,” Glaser told TheWrap she enjoys working in that place that makes other comics wary these days. “Where I thrive is where other talent would probably say no because it’s such a risk,” she said.

Speaking about award shows, Glaser added, “You could get canceled for something you say, and the crowd is overly sensitive or takes themselves too seriously.”

Nevertheless, she has confident in her skills at navigating in that space and striking the right tone “because I really not only respect show business and desperately want its approval, but I also find it ridiculous and can’t believe I’m in it.”

She told the outlet she’s confident she could both “push the envelope a little bit” while also hitting the “right tone” of keeping the audience happy and entertained.

If she should get the opportunity to host on such a huge platform, and it should all go wrong, Glaser said she wouldn’t sweat that, either. “Then I’ll just go start an animal rescue,” she joked. “I really do think that I can find happiness outside of this business, but I would like to keep working in it as long as possible.”

The clear breakout star of Netflix’s Greatest Roast of All Time, Glaser did not hold back too much when it came to her attacks on the superstar quarterback, which included a particularly sharp barb about him leaving then-pregnant girlfriend Bridget Moynahan in 2006.

“Tom, you’re the best to ever play for too long. You retired, then you came back and then you retired again, I get it, it’s hard to walk away from something that’s not your pregnant girlfriend it’s tough,” Glaser quipped.

“Hey, to be fair, he didn’t know she was pregnant, he just thought she was getting fat,” she added. “Tom hates fat. Do you know about his diet program? If you follow it exactly as he does, you too can lose your family. You can lose so much family. It works.”

Brady seemed to take the roast in stride, though he later admitted on The Pivot Podcast, per CNN, that he wasn’t thrilled with the divorce jokes because of “the way that it affected my kids.”

Speaking on The Howard Stern Show, Glaser had said the comedians collectively decided that Brady’s kids would be an off-limits topic “because they didn’t ask for that.”

The comic had a mixed response when finding out Brady had some regrets about the roast. “It’s impossible to me that he didn’t consider what could have happened,” she said on the Today show, per Variety, referencing all the roast footage available online.

“But then, there’s a part of me that thinks that Tom Brady … no one’s ever said a bad thing to him in the past 30 years,” she mused, “so he doesn’t know what anyone’s capable of going there.”

Gently roasting celebrities has long been a tradition at awards shows, though not nearly as savagely as anyone has been taken down at an actual roast. In more recent years, though, there’s been a move away from that as some stars — and their fans — have taken exception to those jokes.

After both Kimmel and John Mulaney have reportedly turned down the upcoming Oscars broadcast, while Kevin Hart has said he’ll never host it again after stepping down from the 2019 broadcast, there’s at least one comic on the rise who’s got her hand up and is ready to go!