Nikki Glaser's Someday You'll Die: Sometimes She Kills

Nikki Glaser ironically begins her latest HBO special, Someday You’ll Die, with birth. “My friend just had a baby,” she says at the outset, “and so I’ve just been mourning the loss of that friendship.” Beneath the trappings of her comic persona, Glaser sets the tone early for a personal show full of observations on life and death, at times taking a meta turn to reflect on her career up to this point.

The release of the special, filmed at the Moore Theater in Seattle, comes at the end of a good month for Glaser. On May 5, she delivered one of the more memorable sets in Netflix’s The Roast of Tom Brady, where, among other topics, Glaser ribbed the famed quarterback for his involvement with the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency company, FTX. Even Rob Gronkowski, Glaser said, looked at crypto and thought, “Me know that not real money.” Glaser’s last special, 2022’s Good Clean Filth, was also for HBO.

Structurally, Glaser’s show is a linear march towards death. She eventually pivots from birth to aging. The money she earns from the special, she says, will be used for a brow lift. Glaser then acts out a moment of stress, lifting her fingers back and along her temple, tightening her skin. “I’m like, “Oh, my God, snatch,” she adds, pretending to look in a mirror. This is Glaser at her best: a clever premise and punchline coupled with a great physical sense of time and face.

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Talk of death in various forms makes for a conceptually engaging show. Yet Glaser at times deviates from this throughline to less effect. She weighs in, for example, on how comics now tailor their acts to ward off “cancel culture” by citing their personal connections to whatever group of people they might be poking fun at. These more familiar observations feel a bit hollow when set against her more personal musings.

After childbirth and aging, Glaser makes her way to death. As is true for her past work, Glaser is open about her struggles with depression and thoughts of ending her own life. “Please remember it, 988,” she says of the American Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, before joking that 911 clearly had too much on its plate to handle such requests. One of the more resonant moments comes when Glaser dips into a darker space, like when she discusses American society’s cruel way of dealing with death. Glaser wants to die peacefully, by euthanasia, she says, but is resigned to die by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Nikki Glaser has developed a reputation as a comedian who is willing to “go there” in her work, whether it be risqué roasts or taboo topics. In this set, Glaser makes direct reference to this reputation, and seems to be at kind of an inbetween moment: caught between the persona and the clear development shown in the special. “Why is this your career at the age of 39?” she asks as she uses a stool to act out a “gangbang” on stage. “Is this even art anymore?”

At this point in her career, Nikki Glaser is, of course, a pro, able to deliver even the more uninventive jokes with confidence and in a way that gives the special a solid pace. What is most exciting about that rhythmic delivery is its meticulous use to thread together the dark and absurd realities of contemporary life. Someday You’ll Die is not a groundbreaking affair, but Glaser’s performance and ability to weave together the personal with the universal leaves its audience excited for what comes next.

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic and researcher, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.

Nikki Glaser’s Someday You’ll Die: Sometimes She Kills