Ilana Glazer

Ilana Glazer is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, director, and activist born on April 12, 1987, in New York City. Raised in a Reform Jewish family in St. James, New York, on Long Island, Glazer is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Their parents, Sandi and Larry Glazer, both work in insurance and finance. Their brother, Eliot Glazer, is also a producer, writer, and actor who has collaborated with Glazer on projects including Broad City and The Boys Presents: Diabolical. Glazer graduated from New York University in 2009 with a degree in psychology.

Glazer began their comedy career in 2006 by taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, where they performed improv and stand-up over the following years. In 2009, Glazer and collaborator Abbi Jacobson launched Broad City as a web series, with the two playing fictionalized versions of themselves. The series ran from 2009 to 2011 and attracted the attention of Amy Poehler, who agreed to help Glazer and Jacobson develop a pilot script and appeared in the web series finale. After an initial script commitment with FX did not move forward, Comedy Central acquired the project and ordered a pilot. The television adaptation premiered in January 2014, becoming Comedy Central's highest-rated first season since 2012 among adults 18 to 34, averaging 1.2 million viewers. The series received a Metacritic score of 75 out of 100 for its first season and 89 out of 100 for its second, and ran for five seasons until 2019. Glazer received two Critics' Choice Television Award nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for the role.

Alongside Broad City, Glazer appeared in a range of film and television projects. They starred in the 2013 independent feature How to Follow Strangers, which won top prize at the Lower East Side Film Festival, and appeared in the 2015 film The Night Before. In 2017, Glazer co-starred with Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon in the comedy Rough Night. Glazer co-wrote, produced, and starred in the 2021 Hulu horror film False Positive, and co-wrote and starred in the 2024 comedy Babes. In 2022, Glazer joined the main cast of the Apple TV+ mystery comedy series The Afterparty.

Glazer has also built a body of work in stand-up comedy. Their debut special, The Planet Is Burning, premiered on Amazon Prime in January 2020, with Glazer serving as executive producer and Ryan Cunningham directing. A second stand-up special, Human Magic, followed in 2025.

On Broadway, Glazer made their acting debut in March 2025 in Good Night, and Good Luck, a play written by and starring George Clooney, adapted from his 2005 film of the same name. Glazer portrays Shirley Wershba, a reporter and editor for CBS News who concealed her marriage to colleague Joseph Wershba from the network. Glazer had previously been involved with Broadway as a producer, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2022 for A Strange Loop. Their accolades also include a Daytime Emmy Award, and they have received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Glazer founded the political campaign platform Generator Collective in 2016 with Glennis Meagher, an organization that promotes female election candidates and broader participation in democracy. Glazer identifies as queer and nonbinary, and has spoken about developing their understanding of both identities in part through their work on Broad City and through their experience of pregnancy. In February 2017, Glazer married computational biologist David Rooklin in a private ceremony. Their daughter was born in July 2021.