Why Nikki Glaser Slammed Ben Affleck Over Netflix's The Roast Of Tom Brady
Ben Affleck showed up at the roast of Tom Brady hosted by the Netflix is a Joke Festival and absolutely bombed ... and comedian Nikki Glaser thinks he shouldn't have made an appearance at all.
During an interview with KFC Sports on Barstool Radio (via Variety), Glazer — whose HBO special "Someday You'll Die" is streaming on Max now — bemoaned Affleck's performance for one reason: he just wasn't prepared. Glaser even said that she hasn't revisited the roast itself because it just makes her too uncomfortable to even see Affleck perform so poorly.
"I haven't watched it again, like how it looked, because I don't like to watch people bomb," Glaser said regarding Affleck's jokes. "He didn't prepare. He's someone who's famous enough he probably thinks it's beneath him to do this. Like, 'I'm just gonna do a favor, it's not gonna be that big of a deal.' And then you do it and you go, 'Oh! This is way bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm just kind of phoning it in,'"
Affleck, infamously a Boston native, is an avowed fan of all Boston-area sports — including the New England Patriots, Brady's long-time NFL team — so it's not completely bizarre that he was appeared at the roast. Still, his set wasn't great, and Glaser thinks his biggest mistake was sticking to one solitary schtick instead of mixing up his jokes a bit.
Ben Affleck's roast jokes were pretty lackluster according to Nikki Glaser
So what was the theme Ben Affleck went with for his Tom Brady roast jokes? Being mad at random people on social media. As Nikki Glaser pointed out in the same interview, it's possible that Affleck pitched "an angle where [he's] mad about tweets" because, as she put it, "that's his thing." Still, she's not wrong. The set just didn't work at all, and Affleck wouldn't change course.
"I don't think I'll ever get this chance again," Affleck said while ostensibly roasting Brady but clearly referring to people who attack him on social media. After saying he'll likely never "work again," which feels a bit extreme, Affleck continued, "You guys out there talking sh** all right, behind your f***ing keyboard, that doesn't make you a fan. That makes you a b*tch."
As Glaser put it, Affleck could have gone with a lot of different concepts for his roast, and there were a lot of great possibilities — but he got in his own way by sticking to the "keyboard warriors" angle, which just kept bombing. Furthermore, he should have simply pivoted to find something that would make people laugh. "It didn't work right away, so it's not gonna work later," she said. "Everyone else is like joke, joke, joke, so if your joke bombs, you're onto the next one. That's probably what he should've done."
Tom Brady didn't discuss Ben Affleck's jokes, but he just didn't like the roast in general
All in all, the roast of Tom Brady was pretty solid, and Nikki Glaser definitely has standing to critique Ben Affleck, considering how excellent her set was in particular. Throughout the evening, huge industry and sports stars like Bill Belicheck, Kevin Hart (who hosted the evening), Sam Jay, Will Ferrell performing as his Anchorman character Ron Burgundy, and even Kim Kardashian (whose appearance was apparently edited later by Netflix) joined in to roast Brady, and the football legend even delivered during his own set. Later on, though, he admitted he wouldn't do a roast again, mostly because of his kids (with ex-wife Gisele Bundchen, whose name came up quite a lot during the night).
"I liked when the jokes were about me. I thought they were so fun. I didn't like the way they affected my kids," Brady said on The Pivot Podcast after the roast. "It's the hardest part about ... like the bittersweet aspect of when you do something that you think is one way and then all of a sudden you realize: I wouldn't do that again because of the way that it affected actually the people that I care about the most in the world."
If you're not Tom Brady and want to revisit his roast or check it out for the first time, it's streaming on Netflix (and it does still include Affleck's jokes, unfortunately).