Nikki Glaser’s ‘SNL’ Monologue Was No More Offensive Than Her Last Decade of Stand-Up

(Caution to sensitive readers: If you were offended by Nikki Glaser’s SNL monologue, you’re not going to like the additional jokes cited below.) 

Nikki Glaser is no Nate Bargatze.

She’s the opposite of a clean comic, which had some viewers clutching their pearls as she made her Saturday Night Live hosting debut last weekend. Glaser, who broke through into the mainstream with her outrageous roasts of Tom Brady and other celebrities, didn’t hold back during a monologue that included jokes around rape, pedophilia, trafficking, and incest. The jokes “soon raised eyebrows from many SNL viewers,” according to Us Weekly and other outlets, which culled Twitter feeds for “backlash” like, “Nikki Glaser really giving me the ick on SNL tonight.”

I’m not going to indict or defend any of Glaser’s jokes, other than to say her punchlines weren’t endorsing those controversial subjects. But how could anyone be shocked? Lorne Michaels got exactly what he paid for in Glaser — a comic known for stepping right up to the line of good taste, then extending her big toe across the boundary. 

These are exactly the same jokes she’s been telling for years, folks. Here’s a bit about infertility from 2024’s Someday You’ll Die (nominated for Emmy, Critics' Choice and Golden Globe awards): “You hear about a teen who gets raped by her uncle, and God’s like, ‘Here’s twins,’ and you’re like, ‘What the fuck? Are you serious? I’m over here trying.’ So, my boyfriend and I have stopped doing that role-play because that was risky. We were playing with fire!”

Jokes about race are a staple of her roast material. She told NBA star Blake Griffin, “You look like a Black guy that got made by a printer running out of ink.” Her vicious punchlines about Jewel included this one: “Your teeth are like the Spice Girls, they’re all different colors and doing their own things.”

She brought up Rob Lowe’s let’s-not-talk-about-it past in another roast: “You look like you’re sculpted. I mean, you put the ‘statue’ in ‘statutory rape.’ God, I had such a crush on you when I was a little girl. If only I’d known that’s when I had my best shot.”

A bit about watching porn for sex tips snuck in an incest joke: “So I’m sitting there with a notebook like, ‘Okay, look kinda scared. Perfect... Use my feet. Great... Bring mom into the mix— I don’t want to do that! She’s such a prude!’”

Glaser’s 2019 Netflix special, Bangin’, is an entire hour about sex, if that’s what gets you mad. “I hit puberty around like 22 … and at that time, guys started to take interest ’cause I had sort of blossomed into this like blackout drunk.”

There’s no doubt some viewers took offense to Saturday’s provocative punchlines, but was social media really in an uproar? It took about thirty seconds to pull these comments from Reddit:

“Glaser brought an edge, a sorta pessimism that I’ve been missing from this show for a minute. Great episode and incredible host.”

“I never thought I'd laugh that hard at child molestation jokes, but here we are.”

“She was great. Loved the monologue and people trying to figure out if they can laugh or not.”

Some people liked Glaser’s monologue, and other people didn’t. But you can’t say Glaser delivered anything but her very Nikki Glaser style of stand-up. Seems to be working for her.