Nicole Byer

Nicole Byer (born August 29, 1986) is an American comedian, actress, and television host. She is known as the host of the Netflix comedic reality bake-off series Nailed It! (2018–2022), for which she has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Byer gained recognition for her work in the commentary series Girl Code (2013). Byer later starred in the MTV/Facebook Watch comedy series Loosely Exactly Nicole (2016–2018), which was based on her real life experiences. She made several guest appearances in such comedy series as 30 Rock (2012), Family Guy (2016), Transparent (2016–2017), The Good Place (2019), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2019–2021), and The Simpsons (2019). She also appeared in films, including Other People (2016), All About Nina (2018), Bad Hair (2020), and Valley Girl (2020). In 2021, Byer began co-hosting Wipeout with John Cena.

Byer is the host of the Headgum podcast Why Won't You Date Me?, the Earwolf podcast Best Friends co-hosted with Sasheer Zamata, and the Headgum podcast Newcomers.

Byer's first full-length special, Nicole Byer: BBW (Big Beautiful Weirdo), premiered on Netflix in December 2021 and earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special.

Byer was born and raised in New Jersey and moved to New York City in the early 2000s. She worked there as a waitress for a restaurant and cabaret club. She described how the experience eventually led to her to studying improv, "They would give me a lot of money because they were like, 'You're very funny. You have to get out of here. You're very bad at this [waiting tables].'" Byer's parents both died when she was young, her mother while Nicole was a teen in high school, and her father when she was 21. She has said that comedy helped her work through both her parents' deaths, "it was a blessing that I had found these things before they passed away so I could escape."

She then took classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, starting improv and sketch comedy in June 2008, the same month that her father died. She continued with improv and sketch comedy before starting her stand-up career in 2013. Byer graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy Certificate Program in Professional Performance.

She tours the United States doing stand-up comedy and regularly performs improv with Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles.

Byer began appearing on Girl Code on MTV in 2013. In 2014, she hosted the first season of MTV's Are You the One? The Aftermatch Live, an after-show for Are You the One?. She appeared in several roles on network television in 2016. That year, she had supporting roles on three shows: MTV's commentary show Girl Code; a hidden camera prank show Ladylike, also on MTV; and she was a series regular on the Fox show Party Over Here, a half-hour sketch comedy created by Paul Scheer and Lonely Island, which was cancelled after one season. As a commentator on the show Girl Code, she was described by Maitri Mehta at Bustle as a "beloved talking head"; Stephanie Merry at The Washington Post called Byer "one of the most dependably funny commentators" on the show. Early in her career, Byer learned to do her own makeup and hairstyling before performances, after experiences with on-set makeup artists and hairstylists unprepared to work with her skin tone and hair texture.