Nikki Glaser is looking back at her time hosting the Golden Globes and acknowledging that the joke she made about Selena Gomez’s fiancé, Benny Blanco, was “pretty mean.”
In a conversation at the Time100 Summit this week, the comedian admitted to having “a reputation of being mean” due to her appearances on the roast specials, adding, “But I’m hired to [be] mean for those.”
“Golden Globes, it’s not my job to ruin their night,” she said.
During the 2025 Golden Globes in January, Glaser joked, “Selena Gomez is here with Benny Blanco, her new fiancé, and Benny Blanco is here because of the genie who granted him that wish.”
Recalling the joke, Glaser admits that the joke “was kind of mean,” adding, “I said that Selena Gomez is here because of Emilia Pérez and Benny Blanco is here because the genie granted him that one wish, and looking back, I was like that was pretty mean.”
“Because everyone’s like he’s not attractive enough for her and for me, I never looked at them and actually thought that,” she said. “I feel like she won too with it, like I think he’s really cool.”
The stand-up comedian said that she took the advice from Jimmy Kimmel after the fellow comedian told her, “If you’re worried about a joke, and how it’s going to go over, just ask them.”
Before making the joke on TV, Glaser said she texted Blanco and ran the quip by him.
“He was like, ‘That’s hilarious, let me run it by Selena’” and I was like ‘Hell yeah,’ and then we were all waiting in the writer’s room like, ‘When is he going to write?’ and he wrote back and was like, ‘Selena thinks it’s great,’ ” she said. “So they gave me permission.”
Glaser is returning to host the Golden Globes next year, which is set to take place on Sunday, January 11, 2026.