Nikki Glaser Reveals Her One Golden Globes Hosting Joke Regret
Hosting an awards show can be a thankless gig. Yet critics agree Nikki Glaser crushed her first time hosting the 2025 Golden Globes on Sunday night.
The comedian deftly walked the line between mocking and celebrating the entertainment industry, and overall seeming genuinely happy to be on the Beverly Hilton stage. Yet Glaser, who’s rather perfectionistic about her craft, has some next-day gripes about her own performance.
“Just, ‘Oh I phrased that joke incorrectly,’” Glaser told Howard Stern on Monday morning.
Specifically, that Ben Affleck joke.
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Here’s what Glaser said on stage: ““Wicked, Queer, Nightbitch — these are not just words Ben Affleck yells after he orgasms. These are some of the incredible movies nominated tonight.”
But that’s not the way the joke was written. “It was supposed to be ‘when he orgasms’ and I said ‘after’ and it really bugged me,” she said.
“It still works,” she added. “It’s just less clear. It’s 2 percent more funny [the other way].” (Well, arguably more than 2 percent — the original line paints a rather hilarious visual).
“And then there was a stumble on the television line…” she said, referring to another joke.
When Stern pointed out that nobody cares about the version of jokes they didn’t hear, and Glaser countered, “They don’t know how much more they would have liked it.”
She noted that one of her writers assured her after the show: “‘You can’t get 101 percent on this, stop, you got an A plus.’” Overall, “I went to bed happy,” she said.
Backstage, she said she got a rather nice compliment from Harrison Ford, who was the target of one of her jokes. The actor assured her, “‘This is such a tough gig and you’re doing such a good job.’”
Stern also asked Glaser about how much she was paid, and she replied, “There was a past host who said how much he got paid in his monologue,” Glaser said, referring to Jerrod Carmichael revealing he was paid $500,000 for the gig when he hosted in 2023 (a performance that was almost as widely criticized as last year’s Jo Koy). “I got less than that. It’s OK. I’ll get more next year. I honestly would have done it for free, it’s such an insane platform … [But] next time I’ll ask for more money.”
Glaser says she hasn’t been formally asked to host again next year, but confidentially predicted, “I can’t imagine they wouldn’t … It’s hard to find people to do these shows … [But] I would never be able to live with myself if I turned it down because I’m scared of bombing.”
Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.
