How Nikki Glaser Prepared for the Tom Brady Roast After Not Knowing Why He’s ‘So Great’

Nikki Glaser was already a star in the comedy world when she reached a whole new audience by doing what she does best: mercilessly roasting celebrities.

On a stage filled with some of the world’s biggest comics, Glaser was a breakout star of the 2024 Netflix special, “The Roast of Tom Brady.” Her hilarious zingers at the expense of the legendary NFL quarterback and current Fox Sports broadcaster led to her hosting the Golden Globes, a gig she’s since secured for a third year in 2027.

Glaser, 41, spoke with Willie Geist on TODAY’s Sunday Sitdown on May 3 about how she prepared for her breakthrough moment at the Brady roast, which came after decades on the standup comedy circuit and memorable appearances on Comedy Central roasts of other celebrities.

“It’s weird, because I don’t know these people,” she said. “I don’t care about football, and I don’t really know why (Brady) is so great. So I just had to do my research and read his book and watch all of his interviews, and just get to a place where I was like, ‘Oh my God, Tom Brady.’ Like, where I believed in it, and I understood how great he was, so that I can then dismantle him.”

She scorched Brady on everything from his divorce from Gisele Bündchen to his cryptocurrency investments gone wrong.

“Tom Brady, five-time Super Bowl MVP, most career wins, most career touchdowns, you have seven rings. Well, eight now that Gisele gave hers back, but…” she said in one line.

Glaser, whose new comedy special “Good Girl” is streaming on Hulu, also shared her reaction to people acting like she had been “discovered” after the Brady roast, even though she had worked as a comedian for years.

“No, I don’t mind it,” she said. “I kind of like sometimes that people think that I’m just naturally this good, and that it hasn’t been 22 years leading up to this moment.”

The comedian’s wheelhouse is roasts, where she has delivered one stinging line after another.

“I really think the safest place for free speech that we have is a roast, because the things that get said, you would be canceled for saying them anywhere else,” she said. “It’s your job to go there.”

Glaser is known for finding that sweet spot of going just far enough for crowds to laugh and wince at the same time. In “Good Girl,” she hit topics like aging, fame and her sex life for a crowd in her hometown of St. Louis that included her parents, E.J. and Julie, and she didn’t hold back.

“Usually when they come to my live shows I will literally say into the microphone, ‘Hey Dad, you might want to go out to the merch booth and get a T-shirt right now for the next 15 minutes, I think you’d be safe,'” she said.

“But for the special I couldn’t really tell them to leave because we were at a taping, and I just had to disassociate, and they do, too,” she added.

“I’ve become immune over the years,” E.J. Glaser told Willie on TODAY. “But when she first started doing this, we’d go to clubs with our friends. On the way out my friends would be like, ‘Sorry, dude.'”

E.J. and Julie Glaser have supported their daughter’s comedy dreams since she was a struggling freshman at the University of Colorado.

“We believed in her because it was an escape,” Julie Glaser said.

“There was nothing I was exceptional at, and I was just dying to be seen,” Nikki Glaser said. “I was kind of in the throes of a crazy eating disorder. I was just kind of wasting away, and so I just turned up my personality. I just became a lot funnier than I had ever been before just so I could make friends and make people forget about what they were looking at. And that was the first time I started hearing like, ‘You should be a comedian.'”

Glaser studied legendary comic Sarah Silverman before trying standup herself at a comedy showcase on campus.

“I called my dad backstage,” she said. “I was just like, ‘I know what I want to do. I’m going to be a comedian.’ And it was like, ‘OK, well, let’s figure out this eating disorder, because this is going to stand in my way.’ It just gave me something to live for.”

Glaser is known as a fearless comic, but she admittedly was a little intimidated when she first hosted the Golden Globes in 2025.

“Oh, that was terrifying,” she said. “I think it was (former Golden Globes host) Ricky (Gervais) who told me like, ‘You aren’t one of them. You’re not an A-lister. And no offense, but we’re comedians. We’re clowns. And they want to feel like you are just so in awe of them.'”

Glaser’s performance was so well received that she is now in line to host the awards for the third straight time.

“The second year I could walk out there, and I sensed that their faces weren’t as pained,” she said. “There was a little bit more leaning in of like, ‘I hope she might talk about me.'”

While lobbing one-liners at a group of Hollywood’s biggest stars is no sweat for Glaser, there is one person whom she blushed at the thought of being able to work with one day.

“If I’m putting one out there, I would like to be in a Taylor Swift music video someday,” she said. “I’m just the biggest Swiftie, and I just love the way she directs. I would never approach her with it or anything, and I would be embarrassed if she ever saw this clip.

“She’s aware of me, and so sweet. But it’s too overwhelming. I honestly am blushing. This is the only thing where I will get a little bit cagey, because I just want to be respectful,” Glaser added. “She doesn’t even have to be my friend. I’m not asking for much, and I’ll do my best, and she can cut me out of it. I just want to watch her work.”