Nikki Glaser not only survived her second Golden Globes hosting gig but came armed with receipts for the jokes that didn’t make it to air.
In a post-ceremony appearance on The Howard Stern Show, the comedian revealed what was cut from her opening monologue at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at how close several celebrities came to being absolutely torched on live television.
The appearance marked the second time Glaser has gone to Stern after hosting the Globes, quietly turning the show into an unofficial clearinghouse for jokes deemed too risky, too dark, or too nuclear for primetime.
Some of the cuts were strategic. Others came down to optics. And a few, Glaser admitted, were about reading the room and adapting to the vibes, the energy, and the looks on people’s faces.
Explaining why she’s more willing to let jokes go now:
“There's been times where jokes have really hurt people’s feelings, or I’ve gone too far, and I feel like I’m always okay with losing stuff now. It was always really hard to cut those jokes, and now I’m just like, ‘You just don’t get everything you want, and you just gotta move on, and let’s just write a better joke. There’s gotta be a better joke out there.’”
Glaser revealed she’d prepared jokes targeting Sydney Sweeney, Jonathan Bailey, Sean Penn, Timothée Chalamet, AI’s version of an actress, Jeff Goldblum, and Brad Pitt’s eternal leading-man status. Several of those punchlines were scrapped because they risked tipping from sharp into mean.
Sweeney, in particular, narrowly escaped a brutal box-office dig. The actor had a high-visibility year marked by nonstop discourse around her roles and uneven theatrical performance, which was fodder Glaser fully intended to mine.
The joke that got cut:
“People just aren’t going to the theater to see things. If you don’t believe me, there was a movie this year where Sydney Sweeney played a lesbian who just bounced around in tiny shorts for two hours, and it made $14.”
The line was a reference to Christy, a biopic about boxer Christy Martin that required Sweeney to undergo a dramatic physical transformation but flopped at the box office. In the end, Glaser decided the joke crossed the delicate line between brutally funny and just plain brutal, and chose to let it go.
Brad Pitt avoided the roast altogether by being absent. Had he attended, and been nominated, Glaser said she would have been ready with commentary on Hollywood’s aggressively uneven aging standards.
Her unused Pitt jab:
“When a man turns 60, he gets to play a race car driver. Meanwhile, after 35, every role for a woman is a tired mom who hates her life.”
Pitt was not nominated this year, as his Formula One racing film had not yet reached release or awards eligibility during the Golden Globes’ qualifying period.
Twisting the knife, Glaser had a second joke ready:
“Brad, you were so good ... I was almost convinced that you’ve driven yourself somewhere in the last 30 years. But Brad did a lot of his own driving in the movie. And Brad, I don’t want to embarrass you, but your blinker was on the whole time.”
Sean Penn, who was nominated for One Battle After Another, fared better than expected. Onstage, Glaser limited herself to calling him “a sexy leather handbag,” but offstage, she admitted the gloves were off. Among the jokes she cut were lines suggesting Penn was nominated for “best neck veins” and that “two of the hardest working actors in Hollywood” were his lower eyelids.
Jonathan Bailey also narrowly avoided becoming a punchline. Fresh off being named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive—the first openly gay man to receive the title—Bailey would have been squarely in Glaser’s sights had he attended the ceremony.
The line Glaser would’ve used:
“Jonathan is the first openly gay man to be named the Sexiest Man Alive by 'People' magazine. And at first I was like, do we really need to say ‘openly’? And then I looked at a list of past winners, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, we do.’”
Timothée Chalamet didn’t escape entirely. Glaser roasted him during her actual monologue, but she admitted she cut one joke about his sex life that leaned too far into podcast-bait territory.
The joke that didn’t make air:
“Amy Poehler is here for her podcast 'Good Hang,' which is what Timothée Chalamet says after sex.”
Chalamet, who won Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy that night, appeared unfazed, celebrating with girlfriend Kylie Jenner before delivering a gracious acceptance speech.
Not everyone was even touchable. Glaser revealed Julia Roberts was effectively off-limits because the backlash risk was too high.
Glaser on the Roberts joke she abandoned:
“This was the joke I had written about [Roberts], where I literally thought I was going to be tarred and feathered after the show. Julia Roberts is nominated for 'After the Hunt.' I don’t know what it’s about, but I’m assuming the hunt was to find someone who’s seen it.”
You can watch the clip from her Howard Stern appearance here:
- YouTubeThe Howard Stern Show
Before taking the Globes stage, where she did roast Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating history and his childhood interview with Teen Beat, CBS News, and her own attraction to Michael B. Jordan, Glaser told People her goal was to zig where audiences expected her to zag.
That discipline appears to be paying off as social media reacted to the jokes:
@manuelgarciaiv2395/YouTube
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@roter13/YouTube
@mountainsmusicbeer5532/YouTube
@jayr3053/YouTube
@rays2794/YouTube
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@kelwinkwel/YouTube
Glaser told Variety she'd happily return to host the Golden Globes for a third time next year, and producers appear more than open to the idea.
Executive producer Glenn Weiss praised her work ethic to Variety:
“I think she’s a perfect host for us. And I will say this, that she is one of the hardest-working people I’ve met in this industry. She really cares about what she’s doing. She goes out, she practices sets, things changed right up till when we went on the air from our first rehearsal to the last. And I’ve got to give her major props for not just how funny she is, but how hard she works and what a great person she is for this role.”
Beyond the Globes, Glaser shows no signs of slowing down. The stand-up comic and podcaster continues to build momentum through sold-out tour dates, comedy specials, and high-profile media appearances, carving out a lane that blends fearless roast humor with sharpened restraint.
If this is what she didn’t say at the Golden Globes, a third hosting gig may be less about whether Glaser is willing and more about whether Hollywood is ready.
