It’s been months since The Roast of Tom Brady hit Netflix (one of the best streaming services), but the former NFL quarterback is still having regrets about participating in the event. Brady took some hard hits during the evening and admitted to wishing that he opted out of the roast for the sake of his children. Now, Nikki Glaser — who was one of the roasters — is continuing to discuss on her own participation. She most recently discussed the “backlash” she’s experienced and laid out what she thinks about Brady’s feelings in hindsight.
The gloves were off during the Brady roast, as the comedians and football players who participated seemingly made jokes about everything under the sun. There seemed to be few limits placed on what they could joke about, including jabs about his divorce from Gisele Bündchen, crypto financial losses and football rivalries. Nikki Glaser previously discussed Brady’s reaction, saying that he may not have been informed on how rough the roasts can get. The comedian spoke to that point and more during an interview with Deadline:
Yeah. There was a little bit of backlash. I’m a team player. If someone would’ve said, ‘Don’t say something,’ I would’ve not said it. And I simply wasn’t told not to say things. And so, I just think that that’s not Tom’s fault. He probably just didn’t think people would go where they went, including me. And so, he didn’t even know that he was supposed to say, ‘Don’t say those things.’
After the roast was streamed live this past May, there were a slew of reports on how Tom Brady allegedly felt about the roast and the lingering effects the event had on his family dynamic. Brady and Bündchen are divorced, yet they both still co-parent their two children together. Even if this was the case, the former New England Patriots player willingly participated in the event, and signed off on any and all jokes made at his expense throughout the night. That said, Nikki Glaser still believes that Brady probably didn’t anticipate the comedians to go as hard as they did and that she felt some guilt in the aftermath:
I imagine he wasn’t prepared, but I did feel bad. I don’t like being mean when it’s not allowed. I love roasts because it is allowed, and I’m like, “OK, I can really do whatever I want because I’m not offending anyone because everyone signed up for this and they’re literally asking for it.” I can be like, “Well, you asked for it. Look at the way you were dressed.” I have that scapegoat in it, but I did feel bad. I didn’t read any of the articles that came out about it because I didn’t want to feel sad and sorry for what I did, and I thought, maybe I should write to him. And I’m like, it’s not even going to get to him. No one’s going to let me write to him. He’s not going to see some statement I put out. He was up there and was allowed to do the same thing that I was allowed to do, and he could have gone to the same places that I went to, and so I just felt it was a fair game.
Roasts are a tradition at this point, and the seven-time Super Bowl winner is far from the first celebrity to participate in such a lashing by their own free will. The roasts of Alec Baldwin, Justin Bieber and James Franco were all big hits for Comedy Central. Plus, Brady wasn’t the only person who had jokes made at their expense throughout the night, and he had the opportunity to roast everyone there at the end of the broadcast himself.
After all of the Tom Brady roast backlash, Nikki Glaser found herself reflecting on why she enjoys participating in them in general. She’s widely considered one of the best roast comedians ever, but she is self aware that sometimes out of context, her jokes can come across as mean spirited or out of line. While speaking to Deadline, Glaser ultimately used a sports analogy to explain her approach to the quippy, scathing jokes she’s known for sharing here and there:
Yeah. It really is, but I really have had some moments of like, ‘Wow, why do I find that it’s OK to say these things just because someone signed up for it or asked?’ There have been moments where I’ve looked back on what I’ve said, and out of context, I’m like, ‘That seems really cruel and really out of line, and is this a good thing for the world to be putting out there this kind of negativity?’ I just did what I was asked. Tom is participating in a sport where people are injured in ways where their lives are ruined, literally ruined. And I’m watching all these documentaries about football because I’m just trying to appreciate it more because now I’m kind of in this sports world and I’m getting asked to do sports things and I really want to appreciate it on a new level because of my involvement in the roast and reading about Tom and what it took for him to get to where he is. But I’m like, these guys beat each other up so bad and a guy will be on the ground injured and all the medics are rushing out and the team member that just slammed him to the ground just walks away. They move on very quickly from things. And so, I think it’s a very similar thing.
This is an interesting way of putting it. While players on a football field might be taking actual physical beatings, roast comedians are used to taking emotional ones. While Tom Brady may have been accustomed to a sacking from an opposing team, he was apparently not used to a brutal roasting, and the bruising effect it may have. Even if Brady does have his own regrets about the roast, he hasn’t directed anything specific towards Glaser and the jokes she made at the event. Ultimately, she was doing the job she was hired for and, based on the reactions from the crowd at Brady’s roast, she was a hit.
You can revisit The Roast of Tom Brady now with a Netflix subscription. Fans of Nikki Glaser should also check out her latest comedy special, Someday You’ll Die, which is available to stream with a Max subscription. For more information on other hilarious stand-up sets streaming on the platform now, make sure to read up on the funniest comedy specials streaming on Max.