Nikki Glaser Realizes She’s a Younger Version of Joan Rivers

Nikki Glaser was in New York to appear in a star-studded tribute to Joan Rivers, and she felt sick about it. “It feels like, ‘Oh, no. I tricked them,” Glaser told Rolling Stone. “And now I have to live up to this thing that they maybe saw in me, one moment of greatness, but, like, I can’t keep that up.”

Even as The New York Times named her 2024’s Comedian of the Year (“Glaser gets underestimated because she’s filthy, but she can go high as well as low”), the comic still isn’t convinced she belongs on that stage. “I’m just a fraud,” she recently told a friend during a low point. “And I didn’t even write that joke that everyone is obsessed with and compliments me for all the time.” 

Self-doubt coupled with online criticism about her looks have fueled both jokes and depression. Her appearance this week at the Women in Entertainment Gala is a prime example, delivering several punchlines about her appearance. “If I started showing up places without makeup,” she joked, “my agents would place me under conservatorship controlled by Jamie Spears.”

Don’t worry about beauty or getting older, say the people around her, comparing the comic to Joan Rivers. Glaser isn’t buying it. “It’s, like, insulting to me and Joan,” she says. “We care about our looks too.” 

That became very clear as Glaser reviewed old Rivers jokes in preparation for her tribute routine. “She felt like she was an ugly person,” Glaser explained, noting the parallel to her own uncertainties. “And she was funny because she was ugly and she didn’t like herself. And thank God she didn’t because we got Joan.”

Glaser told Rolling Stone she was nervous about her closer for the set, a risky punchline that pushed the boundaries of good taste. Then she considered WWJD — what would Joan do? “I’m saying this in front of her family members (who) are gonna be there,” she said. “If you don’t close strong and you close in a way that makes people groan, that’s such a risk. But I’m kind of thrilled by the risk, because Joan said the most crazy things all the time. She was constantly making people groan and saying things that were inappropriate.” 

Glaser went for it. At the tribute, she revealed that advice from friends: Don’t worry about aging because you’re the next Joan Rivers.

“Of course, that was meant as a compliment but didn’t feel like one,” she told the crowd. “Like when people tell me I look exactly like my dad — stop telling women they look like their dad. Stop. But surely, being compared to Joan, what a gift. It was actually the greatest compliment I could ever ask for because I do want to be like Joan. I want to make people laugh by speaking the unspeakable. I want to turn pain into joy. No, most of all, just like Joan, I want to keep working up until the very end so I can die doing what I love: undergoing a risky surgical procedure.”