‘Welcome Home’ Star Nikki Glaser Dishes On How Hosting ‘FBoy Island’ Helped Her Love Life In St. Louis

Stand-up comedian Nikki Glaser has had a busy couple of years, pandemic notwithstanding.

After releasing both an hour (Nikki Glaser: Bangin’) and a separate half-hour (for season 2 of The Degenerates) of new jokes for Netflix at the end of 2019, as well as playing Freddie Mercury in Netflix’s Historical Roasts special that year, Glaser looked ready to have a stand-out 2020, too. And she has, so to speak.

She filled in as a guest host for Jimmy Kimmel Live, flew in to the Cayman Islands to host the new HBO Max reality series, FBOY Island, ended her daily morning radio show for Comedy Central on SiriusXM, launched a new podcast for iHeartMedia on Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network, and she brought her podcast sidekick Andrew Collin back with her to hometown of St. Louis to do so. Before moving back home, Glaser also managed to score appearances on Netflix’s The Cabin with Bert Kreischer, History of Swear Words, and Showtime’s The Comedy Store docuseries.

Which brings us to the premise of Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?, the comedian’s own reality show that premiered earlier this month on E!

Decider met Glaser in St. Louis (via Zoom) to talk about televising her homecoming, putting her parents in front of the camera, as well as her love life, hosting the inaugural 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards: Unscripted ceremony, her relationship with Swifties and more.

DECIDER: When did production on Welcome Home happen, timing-wise: Before or after you filmed FBOY Island?

Nikki Glaser: After. I pitched the show before FBOY Island. I made the sizzle before, but then when I was on FBOY Island, the show got picked up, and then I shot it in the fall of last year.

A running plotline for Welcome Home has you reconnecting with Chris Convy, your on-again, off-again producer/lover. Did you ever think to yourself this time, wait, is Chris an FBOY?

My experience on FBOY Island definitely did make me think about relationships and dating and how much b.s. there was out there, and how hard it all is and how nothing’s perfect. And look back on something that I had before that just didn’t work out because of things that I thought were deal breakers back then. I was willing to try again. I just had this idea that everything should be so easy. Not the show itself necessarily, but the experiences I took away from being on FBOY Island led me to reassess what I want in a relationship and give things a new chance. But honestly, when the show started shooting; the reality show, my reality show. I was just dating him casually. We were just kind of hanging out and I was trying not to get attached again, because I just didn’t want to get hurt. And then I think the reality show — because he wasn’t interested in being on camera, and I knew that. I told him, I have to do the show and part of the show was me dating. That’s how I pitched it and I want it to be that. I’m looking for a partner. And I just feel I have an easier time dating on camera than I do in real life. I have an easier time doing everything on camera or onstage. I’m just much more honest and myself onstage and on camera. And so I was actually looking to find someone out of this process.

I always wanted to be on The Bachelorette, but I’m, like, too old for it. And so I was like, oh, I’ll just make my own. But when the cameras show up, they show up. You don’t really time them for, I want them to come when I’m doing this thing. It’s just whatever’s going on in your life, and what was going on in my life was I was casually dating my ex-boyfriend. I told him you know, we can see each other behind the scenes, but I’m actually going to pursue relationships with people on camera and he was like, “No, I’ll be on camera” and he stepped up and so you get to see us take our relationship to the next level that it wouldn’t have been taken to had this show not happened.

Interesting. You talk about somehow being easier to live your life on camera because for so many people, it’s the opposite. They feel like once the cameras are on them, they have to act differently. Since you’ve had plenty of offstage but on-camera experiences, what had you learned from those that you cold take with you back to St. Louis?

I think that what I learned from doing Dancing with the Stars and FBOY Island, especially, was that I wanted to be — well, Dancing with the Stars, I didn’t last long enough to actually have that reality show moment. But I liked doing something difficult on camera. I realized that that show forced me to do something that I never would have done normally. For the sake of entertainment and for the sake of just, you know, showing myself struggling with something. I think that’s important to show people. Everything on TV, it always has to be so perfect, and you have to just be your best self and I think that my talent is being able to not be my best self on camera and be OK with that.

Watching FBOY Island, as the host I was yearning to be one of the people in it because I really rely on watching reality shows to make me feel more understood, make me feel closer to my emotions, to see other people emote in that way. I wanted to be on that side of things. I wanted to be that vulnerable. I think it’s really brave to be on a reality show. It’s safe being on scripted shows. It’s safe being a stand-up comedian who knows what you’re gonna say. It is not safe, really not safe, being on reality show. You don’t know what they’re going to do with the edit. You don’t know what you’re going to feel and how you’ll react to the scenarios that you’re put in. I like doing things that scare me. That’s why I did stand-up in the first place. I had stage fright, like so terribly throughout my life, in middle school that my parents were gonna like get me help for it because I would not be able to sleep. Weeks before a presentation I would shake so violently, like, in front of my classmates. I was really quiet and really scared and I just had to overcome that fear. And I think that I’ve just become really complacent when it comes to the stuff that I’m doing in TV recently. And it just didn’t really make me scared. Dancing with the Stars made me scared and then I got kicked off and that fear ended, and I just yearn for things that are both easy because I just get to show up and be myself and also scary because I just can’t predict what I’m going to do or say.

Like say, performing in front of your second grade teacher.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, like who’s gonna show up? What emotions might come out? I think that comedians are so honest and vulnerable, but I think that a lot of them would not be on their own reality show in the way that I was, that I put myself out there of like not not being in charge of the edits, not being able to not getting hair and makeup done beforehand, not having a script. It was the next step in being really honest, doing the show.

You had put your parents on camera before with Not Safe on Comedy Central. How did they take to the process of becoming full-fledged cast members on a reality show?

Yeah, I always resented them for not letting me be a child star. So now I’m making them be elder stars. My parents are so funny. And I think that most comedians always cite the people they grew up with and their family as like being funnier than even they are. And that really is true for me, too. Just living at home in St. Louis and just being around my family again, I was realizing like, Why do I keep trying to package shows with my talented friends? They all have deals where they can’t do something with me because they have a deal with someone else. They all have engagements. My family, what do they have? Tennis on Tuesday? I have this cast of characters around me. Why don’t I make a show out of this? I know these people so well. I know what environments to put them in that will make them the funniest possible.

I put them on Instagram for so long, and they would be on my podcast, they would be on my TV show, they would be on my radio show over the years. I knew they were good on air and I had kind of trained them to be so, but also, on a reality show, all they had to do was be themselves. All they had to do was be comfortable. And so I really just had to set them up so that they felt like they were going to be taken care of, and then with that you watch it and you go wow, these I just keep hearing feedback. Like they just seem so natural. And that was the biggest triumph is that they really are like me, in that sense. They’re just the same way on camera as they are off camera. So many celebrities are just not what you think they are on stage; they get off stage and they’re a totally different person. I’ve never been that way. I’ve always tried to make that a seamless thing. Because I think that’s a comedians job is to be honest and that’s like, that’s just what I love, and so my parents have the same thing. They got to be who they were. Which is easy because our true selves aren’t like, we’re not doing anything nefarious or illegal. So we are free to be ourselves. We’re lucky like that, that we’re not into things that we need to hide like a lot of people are.

One of the things that comes up on your show is something that I wouldn’t imagine ever happens much to a guy in comedy: Having to deal with like crazy fans who might swat your parents.

I mean, that was something that I had never really experienced. I’ve had death threats and I’ve had you know, I have experienced a lot of like scary stuff that I kind of minimize because it’s just, if you give it too much weight, like you can’t really control it…. It’s horrifying that it followed me home and that now my parents are maybe going to be subjected to it, but it is nice that I get to kind of put that out there to show what I’m doing what I have to deal with sometimes because I sometimes forget it’s not normal.

Although one thing you probably don’t have to worry about quite as much, especially after the first episode comes out, is Taylor Swift’s fans coming for you.

That’s true. They they have to know my intentions now. Yeah, I was just on a Taylor Swift subreddit recently, which is where I always am, and they were talking about me being a “she was a major part of the documentary and said some really bad things about Taylor,” which I didn’t. I said a couple things that weren’t that nice, but I wasn’t saying anything bad. But yeah, they were coming at me again, and I hope that this is another peace offering. I know where I stand with Taylor. I don’t need to prove anything. But I desperately do want to the Swifties approval still, I guess.

Speaking of which, who does the theme song for your show?

I did. I wrote it and I sang it, and I had my friend mix it and make the music for it. But I wrote it with my guitar and sang it. It’s the first song I’ve ever written.

Wow, it’s good. I mean, I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but it kind of sounds like a Taylor Swift song.

Oh my God! That’s the best compliment ever!

Which is why I had to ask I was like, has this Has this come full circle? Did you get such on her good side that she was gonna do your theme song?

Oh, wow. That is so nice, Sean. That just made my day. Yeah, she’s all I basically listen to, so it was inevitable that the first thing that I would do would sound something like hers. But that is the best compliment ever. Thank you!

Kind of a full circle moment for you: You went back on MTV to host an awards show. What was it like going back on MTV almost a decade after you co-hosted a late-night talk show (Nikki & Sara Live) for them?

MTV has such high turnaround that no one from my time there was still there. Nobody remembered. But that was so cool. I think that that is something that I really want to do in my future is host. It’s just something I’m good at. I’ve hosted forever and I’m good at making really quick biting jokes, which is what you do in award shows, at least up until recently. And it was just a great first kind of foray into that world. And I hope that I get to do more things like that in the future. It was so fun. And it was the reality show award show, for unscripted reality TV shows, so it was like, really low stakes and so fun. And yeah, if award shows continue to be a thing, which I don’t think they’re long for this world. I would like to do more.

And no spoilers, but obviously you’re talking to me right now from St. Louis. You’re still there. No matter what happens in the show, you haven’t left just yet.

I’m there for now. The show does explore what my future holds because it is weird to live in St. Louis, when everything is made in New York or LA, and that’s where all the comedy clubs are. I really struggle with that. Not being there and not being feeling like I’m working every night and a part of the scene. And that’s a struggle I really grapple with on the show. And, you know, until this show came out, everyone in LA thinks I’m in New York, and everyone in New York thinks I’m in LA. And the funny part is that people in the business, even though they know my show, they keep going ‘So where do you live now?’ And I go, St. Louis. And they go ‘Wait, but that was just for the show.’ That’s how much people don’t trust reality TV. I’m trying to bring back trust to reality TV, because I didn’t fake anything for the show. Like I really do live in St. Louis. People are shocked to find that out.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.