It’s hard to make people laugh at the thought of wanting to kill yourself. For Nikki Glaser, though, jokes about suicide might be her funniest yet – to everyone but her mom, that is.
“The joke that’s in the special about my mom saying, ‘People don’t want to hear you talking about blowing your head off’ is a true thing that she said,” Glaser tells Variety for Making A Scene, presented by HBO, recalling the conversation the two had while prepping material for her latest Emmy-nominated special titled, fittingly, “Someday You’ll Die.”
“My mom’s biggest concern is not that her daughter is concerned with killing herself, but that her daughter is going to offend the audience by [talking about] killing herself,” she says.
For most, that would be a sad realization. For a comedian like Glaser, it’s fodder for laughs. “That was always just so funny to me.”
Her jokes about suicide, which are smack-dab in the middle of the hour-long special (“I do have a plan,” she begins, “I always forget that I’m going to kill myself…duh!”) contain the ethos of much of Glaser’s most recent work, which is to talk about the taboo. If there’s no cure for chronic depression, the next best thing is to let people know they’re not alone.
“Our society has a problem. And part of the problem is we don’t talk about it,” she says. “So people that do have suicidal thoughts don’t talk to anyone about it, and then they end up doing it because they feel so alone.”
While unafraid to tackle darker subjects, Glaser repeats how people suffering from suicidal ideation should call the crisis hotline 988 and repeats the 988 hotline number several times throughout her special. Seemingly getting the message out that help is right there if you need it.
But the real challenge is getting a laugh out of these dark topics, at which Glaser has become a master. “Sometimes things just do suck, and the way to soften them is to laugh about it,” she continues. “That, to me, was just about going as dark and as hard as possible and not trying to make it palatable. It will be funnier because you’re not trying to soften the blow.”
Of course, sometimes, mother knows best. That bit that her mom was worried about did end up offending someone in the crowd who had lost someone to suicide.
“I have a right to talk about this too, bitch!” she says about that moment. “You can’t silence me because you’ve been victimized by it through someone. I’ve been victimized by it personally myself, so shut up. Or leave if you don’t like it.”
However, while some comics get off on making people mad, Glaser never enjoys it. She’s known to personally reach out to attendees who have felt affronted by her material. But her patience is also wearing thin. “I’m sorry, lady,” she says, exasperated. “I don’t know where you are, but I hope you’re happy.”
Other divisive material in her special is centered around having kids. Spoiler: she doesn’t want them. “I just don’t feel like devoting my free time to something that could marry a DJ,” she jokes on stage.
Glaser’s jokes about parenting were inspired by her tight-knit group of girlfriends, all of whom had begun having babies over the past two years. Naturally, Glaser felt left behind and misunderstood. Why didn’t her maternal instinct ever kick in?
Thankfully, her digs at motherhood (that new moms are selfish, not selfless; love for a child sounds great, but so does heroin) were already said in the group chat before making their way to the stage.
“If a girl is going to be really horrified by that joke and think, ‘That’s so wrong,’ I really think that person has probably thought those kinds of thoughts, too,” she says. “And they aren’t people I’d want to be friends with anyway.”
Meanwhile, Glaser’s steadfast choice to not have kids became even more glaring since turning 40 last year. She’s not desperate for a life purpose, having found it already in her career. Since achieving mainstream success this past year (boosted by her headline-grabbing Tom Brady roast in May), she doesn’t plan on slowing or settling down. In fact, she even added singing/songwriting to her repertoire of talents. She wrote and sang the special’s title song, a pop track with clear influence from her personal favorite, Taylor Swift.
“Have I written a second song? No. Do I want to? Yes. Am I terrified it won’t happen again? Yes,” she admits. “But at least I can say I did it once and I wrote a really good song. So I guess I’ll just keep writing songs for specials until I have the balls to actually write an album, which is a goal of mine.”
But if she doesn’t? That’s okay, too. Because in the words of Glaser: Someday you’ll die.
If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
