Nikki Glaser reveals the racy jokes cut from her Golden Globes opener: ‘We can’t say that on TV’

Nikki Glaser understands the art of playing to your audience.

The comedian and roastmaster is currently basking in a wave of favorable notices for her Golden Globes hosting performance last night. Today, she stopped by The Howard Stern Show to reveal all the cutting quips that her team eventually decided, “We can’t say that on TV. We cannot say that to people’s faces.”

Glaser developed a system for weeding out the cracks that went too far. Whenever Glaser came across an edgier joke, she told host Howard Stern, “I’d go, ‘move it to the Stern file. We can do it on Stern.'”

Some of the jokes were presumably cut because they honed in on a particular celebrity too directly, as with this gem: “The Golden Globes is the only show where you can see the biggest stars in movies and television join together with the same goal: getting out of here before Dax Shepard asks them to do his podcast.”

Others were deemed inadmissible for the opposite reason: implicating too many celebrities in a single dig. “Think of it, this is the last time all of you will be in the same room together until the Diddy trial,” she says how one would have gone.

Glaser also split the difference, focusing not on individuals or collectives, but ensembles. “Only Murders in the Building is amazing,” one cut joke began. “I think it’s so cool that legends like Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Meryl Streep are still at it, putting out some of the best performances of their careers. It’s so inspiring, and it just goes to show you, you are never too old to still need money.”

Glaser also cut two jokes about Hollywood legend Nicolas Cage, who presented the award for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy. “Nicolas Cage is here tonight, looking well rested after a night of sleeping in Elvis’s coffin,” one quipped. And another: “Nicolas Cage is here, and so is the band of skeletons that follow him playing ragtime jazz.”

“That one was just too weird,” Glaser laughed.

Glaser opened with a crack at Hollywood’s punishing beauty standards, calling the ceremony “Ozempic’s biggest night.” She also planned at one time to joke, “Squid Game is a show where people starve themselves while ruthlessly competing for the ultimate prize. Oh wait, no sorry that’s this show.”

Glaser’s Globes performance was seen by many as an improvement over last year’s host, Jo Koy, who was handed the reins just 10 days out. Koy ended up throwing his writers under the bus after he bombed his opening monologue, remarking at the time, “I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”

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Even with this being Glaser’s first big awards ceremony hosting gig, she ranked at the top of Entertainment Weekly‘s best moments of the night.

You can watch the rest of Glaser’s comments on The Howard Stern Show below.