Glazer played Ilana Wexler on the TV show, which aired for five seasons and spawned countless memes and jokes
Credit: Comedy Central
NEED TO KNOW
- Ilana Glazer opened up about how she’s separated herself from her on-screen alter ego, Ilana Wexler, from Broad City
- Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen named the show’s two leads after themselves
- Glazer said now that she’s older, she thinks of TV’s Abbi and Ilana as ‘kids’ she used to babysit
Ilana Glazer's relationship to her on-screen alter ego is changing.
Glazer, 39, opened up about her time on Broad City in a May 26 interview with Betches. Broad City starred Abbi Jacobsen and Glazer as Abbi Abrams and Ilana Wexler, two struggling twenty-somethings trying to navigate their lives in New York.
The show, which premiered in 2014, was based on their web series of the same name. It aired for five seasons on Comedy Central and received critical acclaim (and spawned numerous memes). But because Glazer and Jacobsen, 42, gave their TV counterparts the same names as their real selves, many fans viewed them as one and the same, instead of as separate characters.
Credit: Linda Kallerus/Comedy Central
Betches' Madeline Mahoney quizzed Glazer on some of the memes that came out of the show, including when Ilana Wexler calls herself a “child bride” because she's “only 27.” Mahoney asked, “How does it feel to still be compared to Ilana Wexler?”
Glazer shared, “I'm more comfortable with it now, cause I am further from her.” She said that audiences, too, can see that she's “older” now.
“Maybe it's part of why I love getting older, because I feel like a new me,” she continued. She said she was “relatively well-known” as her “20-something self.”
“So I'm loving being 39, getting older,” she said. “Oof, I love it.”
So where does that leave the fictional Abbi and Ilana? “Ilana Wexler and Abbo Abrams, I feel like they're my babies, or kids I babysat or something. I like it,” she said.
Credit: Astrida Valigorsky/WireImage
Broad City also starred Hannibal Buress as Ilana's friend-with-benefits Lincoln, Hacks co-creator Paul W. Downs as Abbi's boss, John Gemberling as Matt Bevers and Arturo Castro as Jaimé Castro. Glazer's real-life brother, Eliot Glazer, played her TV brother Eliot, and Susie Essman played their mom Bobbi. Later seasons of the show also featured Bob Balaban, RuPaul, Wanda Sykes and Clea DuVall. The series also pulled an impressive roster of guest stars, including Alan Alda, Steve Buscemi, Fran Drescher, Whoopi Goldberg, Cynthia Nixon, Kelly Ripa, Vanessa Williams, Mara Wilson and Hillary Clinton.
Back in 2025, Glazer opened up to PEOPLE about one of the lines from the show she wished had caught on.
“In [season 5, episode 9] — in the second to last episode ever — Abbi and Ilana are on drugs, realizing that they're codependent. And they're like, 'We're little codees! We're little codees!' " Glazer remembered.
“And it never, like, picked up as its own thing, and I think it should, because I'm so codependent with so many people. I could use that line myself,” she said.
Glazer's roles post-Broad City have included Apple TV's The Afterparty, 2024's Babes and the play Good Night, and Good Luck, in which she made her Broadway debut alongside George Clooney. She released comedy specials in 2020 and 2025, and she will continue to tour her comedy this summer.
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