Nikki Glaser’s Cut Golden Globes Jokes and Why They Were Removed From Her Monologue
Nikki Glaser hosted the 2026 Golden Globes and took a few shots at some of Hollywood’s elite during the show. But she has admitted that there were several other jokes she had all lined up and eventually decided to cut out of her monologue.
During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show following the awards ceremony, Glaser revealed what those jokes were and why she ended up axing them.
One joke that didn’t make the comedian’s monologue was about actress Sydney Sweeney and her role as female boxer Christy Martin in the biopic Christy, in which Glaser was planning to say, “Tonight is a night of celebration but we can’t ignore that it’s a weird time in Hollywood. People just aren’t going to the theatre to see things. If you don’t believe me, there was a movie this year where Sydney Sweeney played a lesbian who just bounced around in tiny shorts for two hours and it made $14.”
However, Sweeney did not attend the ceremony and therefore Glaser pulled the joke.
Other jabs that Glaser scrapped from her monologue for time, concerns about tone, and the audience’s reaction during test runs included “Sean Penn is nominated tonight, I’m assuming for best neck veins?,” “Leo (DiCaprio), why are you always squinting? I mean, I assume it’s to read your girlfriend’s ID. Just making sure that the year starts with a 2,” “Jonathan Bailey is here. Jonathan is the first openly gay man to be named the ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ by People Magazine and at first I was like, ‘Do we really need to say openly?’ and then I looked at a list of past winners and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we do,” and “Pluribus is nominated. Did you guys know that Pluribus is Latin for I haven’t seen it?”
She also nixed what she wrote about other Hollywood heavyhitters like “Julia Roberts is nominated for After the Hunt. I don’t know what it’s about but I’m assuming the ‘hunt’ was to find someone who’s seen it?” and “Jeff Goldblum is here tonight, not because he is nominated. Just because they were shooting an ad for Apartments.com down the street and he just kind of wandered in. Jeff doing ads for Apartments.com is hilarious. You haven’t lived in apartments since you were a fly.”
While talking to Stern and his co-host, Robin Quivers, Glaser acknowledged that some of her jokes that were left on the cutting room floor can have an negative impact on others, explaining, “Things do live on in some way and maybe sometimes a joke is just for the room. There’s been times where jokes have really hurt people’s feelings or I’ve gone too far and I feel like I’m always okay with losing stuff now. I wasn’t before. It was always really hard to cut those jokes and now I’m just like, you just don’t get everything you want and you’ve just gotta move on. And let’s just write a better joke. There’s gotta be a better joke out there.”
