Glazer is now actually a mother, preparing for a tour<\/a> of the United States and Europe that starts Tuesday, hosting a podcast and organizing other moms ahead of the midterm elections. But she says she is still very much herself, even if she doesn\u2019t smoke as much weed as she once did.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are pressured to segregate parts of ourselves into who I was, who I will be \u2014 the not-mom me and the mom me,\u201d Glazer, 39, said in an interview. \u201cI am finding that there is enough room in me for all the parts of me to be me. And the wider I can open my arms to myself, the more aligned I realize I already am.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m horny, I like weed, I love people, I love to dance,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s always been this way.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, there is no denying that things have changed for Glazer: Marriage and motherhood. The end of a tremendously successful television show. The loss of dear friends. Wrinkles. But she is embracing all of those changes in her comedy.<\/p>\n In her video podcast, \u201cIt\u2019s Open With Ilana Glazer,<\/a>\u201d Glazer presses activists, politicians and comedians on their blueprints for change. She founded a grass-roots group<\/a>, Moms & Neighbors for Safe & Fair U.S. Midterm Elections 2026, to get other moms involved in the election process. Her new stand-up hour is centered around her critique of billionaires \u201charshing my mellow,\u201d while navigating the \u201cabsurdity\u201d of the world as a functioning, therapy-dedicated millennial who happens to also love being a mom.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I weren\u2019t laughing, I\u2019d cry,\u201d Glazer said. \u201cI\u2019m old enough, honestly, and experienced enough now to be able to make the place for grief in this hour. And it\u2019s not grief like we\u2019re really sad. It\u2019s grief like we\u2019re just looking at the sad things together.\u201d<\/p>\n Glazer is busy. She took deep breaths before answering questions at a restaurant in Brooklyn where the waiter knows she likes tuna with her salad. She prefers Tuesdays and Wednesdays for shows on the road so she can spend weekends with her family. She finds stillness between moments of excitement and exasperation.<\/p>\n \u201cI have so much passion for the world, and I have just a creative engine that I know is just, like, in my bones,\u201d she said. \u201cI also am looking to simplify in ways, but it might not be my time to simplify, you know? I think I\u2019m in an expansion, this natural expansion, that I can\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p>\n Glazer began building her new stand-up hour last year after finishing her debut Broadway run in \u201cGood Night, and Good Luck\u201d opposite George Clooney as the journalist Shirley Wershba. Last July, she did two two-hour shows on consecutive days at City Winery in Manhattan, starting at 4 p.m. so she could be home for bedtime.<\/p>\n She let the material rest for a few months before transcribing the entire two hours and organizing it into 10-minute bits. She tried out those bits in smaller clubs around New York City in the fall, got feedback from her husband and a few fellow stand-up comedians and kept tightening it into a single hour.<\/p>\n Glazer is approaching this tour with a new sense of confidence. Although she has toured five times, she said it wasn\u2019t until her 2024 tour, which culminated in a Hulu special, \u201cHuman Magic,\u201d that she came to understand the craft and business of stand-up comedy.<\/p>\n \u201cAn uncertainty has been quelled,\u201d Glazer said. Building her new hour \u201cfelt like I was actually approaching a craft rather than swimming and being like, what body of water am I in?\u201d<\/p>\n Kelsie Kiley, who has known and worked with Glazer since 2012, including as a producer of \u201cBroad City\u201d and of Glazer\u2019s podcast, said it \u201cfeels like everything that she has been working for is kind of swirling around and coming into one.\u201d<\/p>\n Glazer initially set out to develop a stand-up set centered around everyday life: arriving at the grocery store and actually checking things off her list because she isn\u2019t stoned; the \u201cbrotopia\u201d of gyms and doing leg presses like she\u2019s pushing a male gynecologist away; taking drugs she once used recreationally that she now needs to function.<\/p>\n \u201cI love getting older,\u201d she says in the show. \u201cI\u2019m approaching the age I\u2019ve always been: 40.\u201d<\/p>\n But she couldn\u2019t ignore what feels like a \u201ca power structure that is trying to kill us,\u201d she said in the interview. Throughout the set, for instance, she swats at Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires as if they were mosquitoes.<\/p>\n She also finds connection in the \u201cshared reality\u201d of parenthood \u2014 the roller coaster of bedtime routines, the emotional maturity of toddlers (her daughter is 4) and why breastfeeding at brunch might be the biggest flex as a new mom.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the more specific I am with the experience, the more understandable it can be to someone who hasn\u2019t had it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Glazer\u2019s greatest strength is her empathy, her friend Kiley said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way that she approaches everything is truly with such a global view in a way of respecting and the human spirit,\u201d Kiley said. \u201cI think that that\u2019s one of the magic things about Ilana that really helps other people resonate with her.\u201d<\/p>\n That empathy has helped sustain an audience that Glazer spent years nurturing. \u201cBroad City,\u201d which ran for five seasons on Comedy Central, from 2014 to 2019, was a platonic love story about two best friends. People still come up to Glazer and talk about the show as if it\u2019s still on the air.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise to Alison Leiby, a comedian, collaborator and friend who said she finds Glazer\u2019s earnestness \u201cgenuinely refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen she tells you something you believe it, and I think that\u2019s such a magic trick when it comes to stand-up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Turning serious topics like fascism, climate change and social welfare into stand-up bits is difficult, Leiby said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is always kind of this battle and it takes time, and the time when you\u2019re figuring it out gets really uncomfortable,\u201d said Leiby, who created a one-hour comedy show about her abortion<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s so exciting to see anybody figure that out. But I think especially her, who is so funny, but also is so engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n For Glazer, it\u2019s all part of defining herself away from the adventures of Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams on \u201cBroad City.\u201d<\/p>\n After all, her fans are growing up, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really looking to understand what is my distinct voice,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t even feel like I\u2019m there yet, and that\u2019s actually energizing to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Remy Tumin<\/p>\n Breaking news reporter<\/p>\n I grew up watching Ilana Glazer navigate the wilds of being a 20-something in New York City as a fellow 20-something in New York City. But in recent months, she kept popping up all over my feeds talking about a very different topic: motherhood. This made sense for my algorithm given I had just had a baby myself. I reached out to Glazer to see if she was interested in talking about where she was at in life and work \u2014 a new tour, a new podcast, organizing other moms \u2014 and how that was intersecting with being a parent. When we sat down for our interview, she almost immediately started asking me about my experience as a new mom. It was important to her to hear about my journey as a parent so she could respond with better context.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
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