I've been hosting for a long time.
You're hosting this show.
You can't say much about it
but you're hosting this show down in the Cayman Islands
which is basically, you're describing
the gig I want, not the gig I have.
It is a dream.
I am on a set.
I've never been on location.
Have you ever been on location, Conan,
where you're like, it's like summer camp
where you're with people for like over a month
and you forget about there's a world outside of the show?
It's like this bubble,
it happened to me on "Dancing with the Stars,"
where I was like,
I got kicked off "Dancing with the Stars."
I actually, well, I got first... voted off
is how I like to say it.
(Conan chuckling)
But as soon as I got off the show
I didn't know how to like, walk around in the real world.
I was just like, I can't,
I was like, "dancing is life and I can't do anything else.
I can't go back to comedy,"
because you get convinced that that's all that matters.
And I'm on this show right now where, yeah, it's intense.
Have you been on location before?
I haven't.
The closest I've come is doing travel shows,
but no, then I'm always on the move.
So no, I haven't done that kind of gig.
Yes, just... it's wild.
And now what I'm curious about is
now that you're hosting
what are you learning about yourself as a host?
What is Nikki Glaser like as a host?
I've been watching other hosts.
Obviously, my goal is to be, like, I love TV hosting.
You are huge influence on me, and pretty much no one else.
Like, I'm obsessed with you.
Oh?
And you aren't one of these heroes that I meet,
where you go, "Oh,
he's not as good as I thought he was gonna be."
You're just as good, if not, like, better
and more personable off-camera
at least to me, but then you find out...
and you seem to be good to the people you work with,
like from what I've seen.
But you find out when you talk to, like, the crew
and get to know these people who've worked on sets
that the stories that seem cartoonish of celebrities
having these egos of, like, no eye contact on set,
things that you think are just mythical
are actually real.
Like, there are celebrities that you and I love,
who you and I probably have met before,
who would only be nice to us because we're celebrities,
but they treat people like trash
and they literally will not allow eye contact.
There's several people that I don't want to name
'cause I'm scared of them and they're powerful,
but I find that to be so just disheartening and awful.
And so I try to be really nice
and have a connection with everyone in the crew.
So, to juxtapose that: I've started, when I arrive on set,
I make each crew member have four to five minutes
of deep connected eye contact with me.
And it's slowed down production quite a bit.
We're about three weeks behind at this point.
(Conan laughing)
And I fallen in love
with one key grip and two gaffers
and there's several HR complaints.
(Conan laughing heartily)
But... and I don't really know what HR stands for.
I'm assuming it stands for "Handjobs Rule."
I don't know.
Well, uh, I haven't looked it up either.
(Nikki laughing)
I don't think that's what it means,
but until I look it up,
I can't be a hundred percent sure.
You can't be sure.
No one can really be sure what HR means.
But yeah, I've just made an extra effort to be nice
and to make people who are working on the show
feel a part of the show
because there is just this divide of celebrities.
And it's not just about the celebrity thinking
they're better than everyone else.
A lot of times people just put that on celebrities
and I'm not even speaking for myself.
I do this too, where you don't...
you see someone in public that you really admire
and you go, "I don't want to bother them."
Or "I don't want to tell them how much I love them
because they hear it all day."
But because of that, everyone thinks we hear it all day.
And so no one says it to us.
Right.
I literally I had to call, like,
the executives of the show, like, my bosses
and go, "you aren't complimenting me enough."
(Conan chuckling)
And they go, "Well, you're great.
We figured you knew.
Like, we gave you this job."
And I go, "I am a celebrity because I am so desperate
for love from strangers and anywhere I can get it,
you will never give me a big enough head,
it will never be enough.
So please, please compliment me."
And I've done that in my own life.
Like I know that, you know...
I write about the bystander effect,
and the one day I went to my psychology class in college
and I wasn't hung over,
and I learned that Kitty Genovese
in 1964 was stabbed to death.
38 people heard her screams for help.
No one called the cops
because everyone thought someone else was calling the cops.
We do this all the time.
"Oh, someone else will do it."
And then no one does it,
and she bleeds to death on the sidewalk.
And, and that's what it's like when you don't
tell me my hair looks good.
I'm bleeding to death.
No, it's not as extreme.
But do you relate to this Conan?
You're comparing, you're comparing your lack,
you're saying it's the same thing,
it's pretty much the same thing and I'm not disagreeing
but it's the same thing that
you not getting enough praise
on the set of your reality show
is pretty much the same
as the stabbing death of Kitty Genovese in 1964.
Yeah, those are...
I'm saying it's exactly the same.
(Conan laughing)
So thank you for understanding me.
There's there is no nuance here or exaggeration.
I'm being literal.
I feel just as abandoned.
But Conan to relate to that?
I mean, you must, because even when I'm around you,
I hesitate to gush
about how much I love you and what I think of you,
because I'm just like, he hears it all the time.
He must, he's like the funniest person.
He's not "like," he is the funniest person alive.
I've always said that.
And do you relate to that Conan?
That people sometimes don't say stuff to you
'cause they're like, "you hear it all the time,"
and you're like, "no, more!."
Well, that's the problem is that it's a no win situation
because what happens is first of all,
if it's someone like you, like an attractive woman
that's all I dreamed about when I was a kid
and in my teens and through my twenties
and then well into my thirties was
(Nikki laughing)
a very attractive woman complimenting me.
That was my dream.
So that's not gonna go away.
I'm not gonna lie, I love that.
But at the same time, what happens is self-loathing kicks in
and so you compensate for it and it gets very complicated.
And so what I've found is that compliments don't last,
compliments are like Tic Tacs.
And when someone says something critical,
that's like a roast beef dinner
that's in your belly for six months.
So I don't know why, you can get a thousand Tic Tacs
and you don't feel anything
but then one person says one thing and you never forget it.
I don't know why, it's crazy, but that's...
Have you found that to be true?
That's why I don't read comments.
Like, I miss so many positive YouTube comments
saying how much, you know, they wanna have sex with me
and maybe saying that
I'm like pretty funny for a woman or whatever.
(Conan laughing)
And I miss all of those things that really build me up
because I don't want to read the one thing
that says, "she's a little too raunchy for me."
That's that's the thing that I get
is people like to give you compliments.
I know you've had this, where they're like
"Oh my God, I love you.
My dad doesn't get you."
Or like, they have to, like, juxtapose it
with someone that like, "I get you.
But this table at the comedy club,
I was watching them the whole time.
They hated you.
How lame are they."
Why do they think you need to know that?
Why do they think you need to know
that someone else doesn't like you?
(Nikki laughing)
Exactly! I'm telling everyone out there
don't couch your compliment with something else negative.
No one likes it that way.
And also, like, people stop telling me that, like...
people always talk about my comedy special.
I do talk about sex a lot.
It's not because I'm like, "I just want to challenge people
and make them uncomfortable around their family."
It's because it's, like, what I want to talk about.
That being said,
it does make people uncomfortable sometimes, and I get that.
Stop watching my special with your grandma.
People always like, "can't watch Nikki's special
with your two-year-old."
It's like, who's watching adult comedy specials
with their family, surrounded by them?
This isn't, like, "Lilo and Stitch."
(Conan chuckling and clapping)
Like, I don't understand how I'm being admonished.
Nikki, many times when my kids were younger
I made the mistake of saying, "Let's check out Nikki's...
"Bangin'.'"
Yeah, "Let's check out Nikki's 'Bangin'.'"
And they would be like, "what is it?"
I'd say, "it's pretty much like 'Lilo and Stitch'."
And it never went well, it never went well.
(Nikki laughing)
My son, you know, is scarred for life.
That's the part, that's the question...
You read your comments and your comments are,
or when people tell you about them,
it's, "I would like to have sex with her."
And that makes perfect sense.
My thing is people who really like what I do
and are big fans with me,
none of them wanna have sex with me.
That's not it.
They don't, I don't get that.
The people who love my work say "I love his work."
And then if you said, "would you like to just
hold hands with him?"
They'd say, "absolutely not."
[Nikki] Conan... listen.
It doesn't translate.
Listen, I will not let you
as someone who is not a fan of Conan outside of you,
tell me how I process my feelings about how funny you are
because you, I don't want to say anything out of turn,
but it does equal sexiness.
And someone asked me the other day,
what celebrity is your hall pass.
And I gave it to, who did I say?
My friend's here.
I gave it to Conan and Dave Matthews.
Oh, you're kidding.
Don't mean to make things weird, but like, yeah.
That's not weird.
You know what I love?
You waited till you were out of the country to tell me this.
It feel safer telling this to you now,
that if you came after me,
you'd have to quarantine for two weeks.
What I love is that you told me during a pandemic,
you waited until it's during a pandemic,
you're on a secluded island in quarantine,
and we're doing this over Zoom.
And then you say, like, "by the way you're my hall pass,
and it's a 24 hour, it ends in 24 hours."
(Nikki laughing)
That's fantastic, that's a great hall pass, thank you.
I don't even have all that.
I mean, I'm not even a relationship,
but I do want to correct you and say,
and for any man who's listening that
aspires to be as funny and as prolific as you are
that women are attracted to funniness.
I mean, funny, it doesn't work the same way for women.
I think I've talked to you about this before.
Like men, aren't like, "she's so funny.
I want her, I want to be inside her."
(Conan laughing heartily)
It's more like, the guys aren't turned on by funniness,
but girls very much are, because it's hot, it's hot.
Well first of all, I disagree.
A lot of men, including myself are very turned on
by women that are funny and make us laugh.
It's a huge, that's a huge deal.
I've just noticed that whenever
the world's most beautiful women are interviewed,
these supermodels, they always say,
"what are you looking for in a man?"
And the first thing they always say is,
"I want him to be funny."
And then a year later they always
marry the same douchey club owner.
Do you know what I mean?
(Nikki laughing)
Who just happens to be worth a billion dollars
and is the least funny person who ever lived.
"You don't know what he's like when we're alone, Conan.
He's so funny."
Yeah, "he knows so many limericks."
Oh my God.
Like I, that, that to me is... you're right.
Funniness is first, and as a comedian,
I think that I can say that and people will believe me,
but, you know, I don't feel like I can rest
on just being funny to attract the right person.
I do feel like I have to do all the other stuff.
And you know, it's a fair balance.
But I do, I hear what you're saying, yeah.
Women don't really show their work when
they say they're attracted to funny.
But I will!
You will, okay.
We'll get to that later, much later.
(Nikki chuckling)
I have to talk to a lawyer
and it's, it's very complicated.
I gotta talk to my wife and then three lawyers.
I'm so sorry to your beautiful wife
who I've stalked endlessly to be like,
"what can I do to be like her?"
(Conan chuckling)
I know how you guys met, I know the scene you shot together.
I know your whole love story.
I know, I know.
It's very sweet.
Well, one of the things I love about her
is that she would watch this and find it really hilarious.
Like, that's her.
Good.
She would find it really hilarious.
And she would, anyone who professed their love for me,
she would take them aside
and go, "you're welcome to take a shot.
You'll... You don't know what you're in for.'
But you'll regret it.
(both laughing heartily)
She'd be like, "you can if you want,
but I gotta tell you, there's troubled waters there."