John Mulaney

John Mulaney
John Edmund Mulaney (born August 26, 1982) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Mulaney first rose to prominence for his work as a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2008 to 2013, where he contributed to numerous sketches and characters, including Stefon, a recurring character that he and Bill Hader co-created. Since his departure from SNL, Mulaney has hosted it several times, becoming a member of the SNL Five Timers Club in 2022.
Mulaney's stand-up specials include The Top Part (2009), New in Town (2012), The Comeback Kid (2015), Kid Gorgeous (2018), and Baby J (2023). He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special in 2018 for Kid Gorgeous. Mulaney released a children's musical comedy special on Netflix, John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019).
He was the creator and star of the short-lived semi-autobiographical Fox sitcom Mulaney (2014–2015). Mulaney also performs George St. Geegland in a comedic duo with Nick Kroll, and they appeared on television and on Broadway in the show Oh, Hello on Broadway (2016). Mulaney serves as a co-executive producer, writer, and occasional actor in the IFC mockumentary series Documentary Now! (2015–present).
Mulaney's voice roles include Andrew Glouberman in the Netflix original animated show Big Mouth (2017–present), Peter Porker / Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Chip in Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and Big Jack Horner in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).
Early life and education
Mulaney was born on August 26, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois, to Ellen Mulaney (née Stanton), a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and Charles "Chip" Mulaney Jr., an attorney and partner at Skadden Arps. His parents are both of Irish Catholic heritage. Mulaney's maternal great-grandparents were George J. Bates, a Republican mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, who also served as a congressman from that state, and Nora Jennings, who moved to the U.S. from Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. His maternal great-uncle is William H. Bates, who also served as a U.S. congressman. Coincidentally, Mulaney's maternal grandmother, Carolyn Stanton, and Hilary Meyers—mother of Mulaney's future Saturday Night Live coworker Seth Meyers—performed together in a hospital benefit show in Marblehead, Massachusetts, called Pills A-Poppin directed by Tommy Tune, then 19.
Mulaney's parents attended Georgetown University and Yale Law School. They were at Georgetown and Yale at the same time as future president Bill Clinton (Mulaney has said he met Clinton in 1992). Growing up, Mulaney was an altar boy. He is the third of five children. He has an elder sister, an elder brother, a younger sister, and a younger brother who died at birth. His confirmation name is Martin, after St. Martin de Porres, to honor his late brother Peter Martin, who died when Mulaney was four.
From watching the lifestyle of the character Ricky Ricardo on the program I Love Lucy, Mulaney knew he wanted to go into show business at age five. At age seven, he was a member of the Chicago-based children’s sketch group “The Rugrats”. Because of this, Mulaney had an opportunity to audition for the role of Kevin in the film Home Alone, but his parents declined. For junior high, he attended St. Clement School where, in lieu of doing reports, he and his best friend, John O'Brien, would offer to perform what they had learned as a skit. At 14, Mulaney played Wally Webb in a production of Our Town. He also frequented the Museum of Broadcast Communications, where he watched archived episodes of shows such as I Love Lucy and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep in 2000. Mulaney then enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Georgetown University, where he majored in English and minored in theology. He joined the school's improv group, and met Nick Kroll and Mike Birbiglia. He later joined Birbiglia on his stand-up tour, which Mulaney cited as helping him overcome his stage fright.
Career
2004–2014: Breakthrough
After graduating from Georgetown in 2004, Mulaney moved to New York City with ambitions of a career in comedy, and was hired as an office assistant at Comedy Central. After a year, he pitched the idea for a parody of I Love the '80s called I Love the '30s, which he developed along with fellow comedian Nick Kroll. Mulaney was working at the network when Dave Chappelle abruptly left. Initially, the network had planned to fly Mulaney out to Los Angeles in order to secure the tapes for season three of Chappelle's eponymous show; instead, feeling it was a "hindrance to being a comedian", Mulaney quit and started working freelance.
Saturday Night Live
After being discovered while performing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Mulaney was asked to audition for Saturday Night Live in August 2008, along with Kroll, Donald Glover, Ellie Kemper, T.J. Miller and Bobby Moynihan. Unusually for an SNL audition, Mulaney did not prepare any impressions, instead performing standup with "charactery bits in them". He went in with low expectations, although he thought it'd be a "cool story". Mulaney won a spot on the writing team, where he remained for four seasons where he wrote the monologues for the hosts. He also occasionally appeared on the show's Weekend Update segment. He and SNL actor Bill Hader co-created the recurring SNL character Stefon. Mulaney was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series with the SNL writing staff from 2009 to 2012. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics at the 2011 Emmys with Justin Timberlake, Seth Meyers and Katreese Barnes.
In addition to his work on SNL, Mulaney has worked for 21 years as a stand-up comedian. He has been a headliner since 2008. He performed at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival. He has performed on Live at Gotham, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Late Night With Conan O'Brien, and Comedy Central Presents. Mulaney also released the comedy album The Top Part in 2009 and the stand-up comedy special New in Town in 2012. Both were produced with Comedy Central.
Mulaney
In May 2013, NBC passed on picking up Mulaney's semi-autobiographical sitcom pilot, Mulaney. In June 2013, Fox ordered a new script while considering whether to order the production of several episodes. In October 2013, Fox announced that it had picked up the show for a six-episode season order. Mulaney was the creator, producer, and writer of his eponymous series. The series starred Mulaney, Nasim Pedrad, Martin Short, and Elliott Gould. The series was cancelled within its first year in May 2015. He has said he "wanted to do the type of live-audience multi-camera sitcoms that I grew up on". The series received poor reviews, including playwright and The New York Times TV critic Neil Genzlinger's, who wrote "It rips off Seinfeld so aggressively that in Episode 2 it even makes fun of its own plagiarism. But one thing it forgot to borrow from Seinfeld was intelligence."
2015–2019: Career expansion
Mulaney's third comedy special, The Comeback Kid, was released on November 13, 2015, on Netflix. His second stand-up show, New in Town, which premiered on Comedy Central in 2012, is also on Netflix. The Comeback Kid received critical acclaim, with David Sims of The Atlantic calling it "a reminder of everything that makes Mulaney so singular: storytelling rich with well-observed details, delivered with the confidence of someone decades older than 33". During this time Mulaney contributed writing to other TV projects, including Maya & Marty; Documentary Now!; Oh, Hello on Broadway; and the Comedy Central Roast of James Franco. He also acted in supporting roles on television shows such as Crashing, Portlandia, and Difficult People. In 2016, Mulaney received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for The Comeback Kid, losing to Patton Oswalt's Talking for Clapping.
Documentary Now!
In 2015, Mulaney served as a writer for the IFC mockumentary series Documentary Now! (2015–present). The series was created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers. During the first season he served as consulting producer before moving as a co-executive producer. The series satirizes acclaimed documentary films. Mulaney has written five of the episodes including, "The Eye Doesn't Lie" (The Thin Blue Line) which he co-wrote with Bill Hader in 2015, "The Bunker" (The War Room), "Parker Gail's Location Is Everything" (Swimming to Cambodia) and "Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid, Parts 1 & 2" (The Kid Stays in the Picture), the later two written with Hader both in 2016. He also wrote the episode "Soldier of Illusion, Parts 1 & 2" (2022) which parodied the films of Werner Herzog.
His first acting role on the show was in the 2019 episode Original Cast Album: Co-Op in Season 3. Mulaney also co-wrote the episode and the songs with Meyers. In the episode Mulaney plays the fictional Simon Sayer, a character based on composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The episode spoofs the landmark D.A. Pennebaker documentary Original Cast Album: Company (1970). The episode features a fictional ill-fated 1970 Broadway musical, Co-op, with songs detailing the joys and pains of a New York City housing cooperative. The episode also featured performances from Renée Elise Goldsberry, Richard Kind, and Alex Brightman. The episode received widespread critical acclaim, with Esquire magazine writing, "Original Cast Recording: Co-op" may be the best episode of the faux-documentary TV series yet".
Oh, Hello
Mulaney performed George St. Geegland, an elderly man from the Upper West Side of New York. St. Geegland with fellow New Yorker Gil Faizon (portrayed by Georgetown classmate and comedian Nick Kroll) host a prank show called Too Much Tuna in which guests are given sandwiches with too much tuna fish. Mulaney has toured the U.S. with Kroll in a show called Oh, Hello, with both in character as George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon, respectively. The show premiered on Broadway on September 23, 2016, and concluded its run on January 22, 2017. The Broadway production was filmed and released on Netflix on June 13, 2017. Steve Martin was the celebrity special guest, with a bonus clip showing Michael J. Fox as the guest. Matthew Broderick appeared as himself in a brief cameo toward the end of the special.
Mulaney's fourth stand-up comedy tour, Kid Gorgeous, kicked off its first leg in May 2017, concluding in July of that year. A second leg began in September 2017 in Colorado Springs, Colorado and concluded in April 2018 in Jacksonville, Florida. The tour featured seven shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in February 2018, one of which was filmed for another Netflix special. Kid Gorgeous met with critical acclaim, with Steve Greene of IndieWire calling it "one of the year's best pieces of writing". David Sims of The Atlantic praised Mulaney's talents as a standup, writing, "With Kid Gorgeous, Mulaney is proving he can endure in a field that even the most successful and talented comics can struggle to stay afloat in." At the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards, Mulaney received an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for Kid Gorgeous.
In 2017, he was invited to appear alongside Steve Martin, Martin Short, Bill Murray, Jimmy Kimmel, and Norm MacDonald to honor David Letterman, who was accepting The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at The Kennedy Center. When accepting the prize, Letterman said, "John Mulaney—this is the future of comedy, ladies and gentlemen." That same year, Mulaney was also invited to appear to do standup at Jon Stewart's charity event Night of Too Many Stars (2017) on HBO, and Seth Rogen's charity event Hilarity for Charity (2018) on Netflix.
Big Mouth
Mulaney provides the voice of a lead character on the animated Netflix series Big Mouth (2017–present) alongside his writing partner Nick Kroll, who co-created the show. He also co-hosted the Independent Spirit Awards ceremonies with Kroll in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, Mulaney provided the voice of Spider-Ham in the Academy Award-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He appeared in a Netflix and YouTube collaboration series hosted by Tan France, Dressing Funny, in June 2019. In November 2020, Late Night with Seth Meyers producer Mike Shoemaker announced that Mulaney had joined the show as a staff writer. Mulaney also returned to voice Spider-Ham in the mobile game Marvel Contest of Champions, and the promotional animated short film Back on the Air.
Mulaney returned to host Saturday Night Live five times: on April 14, 2018; March 2, 2019; February 29, 2020; October 31, 2020; and February 26, 2022, making him the fourth SNL writer (after Conan O'Brien, Louis C.K., and Larry David) to host SNL. As host, he performed in elaborate musical number sketches including "Diner Lobster", "Bodega Musical", "Subway Churro", "Airport Sushi", and "New York Musical". Mulaney joined Saturday Night Lives Five Timer's Club on February 26, 2022. Candice Bergen, Tina Fey, Elliott Gould, Paul Rudd, Steve Martin, and Conan O'Brien welcomed Mulaney into the club in an on-air sketch.
In January 2019, it was announced that Mulaney would tour with Pete Davidson in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for a limited series of comedy shows, "Sundays with Pete & John". Mulaney and Davidson have become close, appearing together on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live. In 2020, Mulaney interviewed actor and playwright André Gregory for the Chicago Humanities Festival; they talked about Gregory's memoir, This Is Not My Memoir, and discussed his life and career.
Sack Lunch Bunch
In December 2019, Mulaney released a children's musical comedy special, John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, on Netflix. The special was inspired by Sesame Street, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, The Electric Company, Free to Be... You and Me, and 3-2-1 Contact. The special features Mulaney, along with 15 child actors and singers, aged 8 to 13. Celebrity cameos include André De Shields, David Byrne, Richard Kind, Natasha Lyonne, Annaleigh Ashford, and Jake Gyllenhaal as "Mr. Music". The special has been universally praised, receiving a 96% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critic Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone Magazine wrote, "It is, like Galaxy Quest, The Princess Bride, or Jane the Virgin, one of those gems that manages to simultaneously parody a genre and be an excellent recreation of it." In 2020, Mulaney received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for his work on the special.
2020–present
In December 2020, Mulaney sought treatment for alcoholism, cocaine addiction, and prescription drug abuse in a 60-day program at a drug rehabilitation facility in Pennsylvania. In May 2021, Mulaney returned to stand-up comedy, working out new material titled John Mulaney: From Scratch. He performed several sold-out shows at City Winery in New York City before announcing a tour starting in Boston, where he sold out 21 shows. Mulaney's tour From Scratch was scheduled to run from March through June 2022 with 33 shows. Parts of the From Scratch routine were later used in Mulaney's 2023 special Baby J.
Mulaney honored Robin Williams posthumously in the Netflix special The Hall: Honoring the Greats of Stand-Up, which was filmed at the Hollywood Palladium as part of the Netflix is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles. Mulaney appeared in the special alongside Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, and Chelsea Handler. In May 2022, during his From Scratch tour, Mulaney invited Chappelle to open his show, which drew criticism due to transphobic jokes Chappelle had made.
In March 2023, it was announced that a new Netflix special from Mulaney, titled Baby J, was slated for release on April 25, 2023. A teaser trailer was released on April 17, 2023. The special, which was filmed in Boston, dealt primarily with Mulaney's visit to drug rehabilitation and his efforts toward sobriety. Variety noted that "the elephant in the room is acknowledged, but never tamed with a comprehensive account of when Mulaney relapsed, or why, or how his fame and fortune affected his addiction, or what it felt like to watch everything play out in the press." Multiple reviews, including Esquire, compared Baby J to Richard Pryor's 1982 special Live on the Sunset Strip in regard to how frank each was about the impact of their addictions.
Mulaney concluded the special by reading and commenting on sections of a "wide-ranging" interview he gave with GQ while under the influence of cocaine, saying he did not remember the answers he had given. The interviewer, Frazier Tharpe, wrote a follow-up piece released the same day as the special, commenting on his interactions with Mulaney and "workshopping the bit" during Mulaney's From Scratch tour.
In 2023 he appeared as himself in the episode "Borgnine" of the Pete Davidson series Bupkis on Peacock. He also guest starred alongside Jon Bernthal, Sarah Paulson, Gillian Jacobs, Bob Odenkirk, and Jamie Lee Curtis in the episode "Fishes" in the Hulu series The Bear.
Influences
When asked about his comedy influences, he said that he "always loved stand-up albums ... growing up in the '90s, I would sit on the floor with my Discman and listen to comedy albums that I bought". Mulaney is a longtime collector of stand-up albums. He has mentioned loving Chris Rock's Bring the Pain (1996) and Bigger & Blacker (1999), Woody Allen's Comedian (1965), Nichols and May's Mike Nichols & Elaine May Examine Doctors (1961), and Albert Brooks's Comedy Minus One (1973). He has also mentioned listening to a lot of Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Conan O'Brien and Bob Newhart. When asked about his top four comedy albums, Mulaney once again cited Rock's Bring the Pain, Mitch Hedberg's Strategic Grill Locations (1999), Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill (1998), and Dave Atell's Skanks for the Memories... (2003)
Personal life
On July 5, 2014, Mulaney married multimedia artist Annamarie Tendler. Friend Dan Levy performed their wedding ceremony in Boiceville, New York.
Mulaney has discussed onstage his struggles with drugs and drinking. In a 2014 interview, he said he had been sober since September 22, 2005. In December 2020, Mulaney checked into a drug rehabilitation center in Pennsylvania for alcoholism, cocaine addiction, and prescription drug abuse. He moved into outpatient care in February 2021. In his first appearance on television in 2021, Mulaney said he had checked into a rehabilitation facility in September 2020, left the recovery program, hosted Saturday Night Live in October, and relapsed after the show. Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Nick Kroll, Natasha Lyonne and other friends then staged an intervention for Mulaney preceding his December 2020 rehab stint. In May 2021, Mulaney and Tendler's separation was announced, with Mulaney filing for divorce in July of that same year. In September 2021, Mulaney announced that he and actress Olivia Munn were expecting a child. On November 24, 2021, Mulaney and Munn's son, Malcolm, was born. Mulaney and Tendler's divorce was finalized in January 2022.
Mulaney has said that he believes in God. In 2014 on WTF with Marc Maron, he said his religious views more closely align with Jewish theology than the Catholic ideas of his upbringing. He has spoken extensively about his love of basketball in his comedy and frequently attends NBA games. He is a Chicago Bulls fan and occasionally attends Brooklyn Nets games.
Political views
In 2016, Mulaney appeared at an event honoring the Armed forces at Joint Base Andrews, "A Celebration of Service", organized by the USO. He performed standup comedy alongside comedians Jon Stewart, Hasan Minhaj, Mike Birbiglia, Kristen Schaal, and David Letterman. Also in attendance were then President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Second Lady Jill Biden.
While hosting Saturday Night Live on February 29, 2020, Mulaney noted that Julius Caesar was stabbed by the Senate for being a maniac, and joked, "That would be an interesting thing if we brought that back now!", in reference to Donald Trump. This joke led to him being investigated by the United States Secret Service. A Secret Service agent contacted NBC on March 2 to try and get in touch with Mulaney's lawyers, but ultimately did not contact him and recommended no action, closing the file on March 5.
In a 2019 Esquire magazine interview, Mulaney said he had donated to Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. On June 2, 2020, he was seen with his then-wife at a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington D.C.
In his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live the weekend before the 2020 United States presidential election, Mulaney called the election an "elderly man contest" and said, "Rest assured, no matter what happens, nothing much will change in the United States. The rich will continue to prosper while the poor languish. Families will be upended by mental illness and drug addiction. Jane Lynch will continue to book lots of projects." Mulaney's statement that "nothing much will change" caused some controversy among audiences. The Daily Beast criticized Mulaney, writing, "To tell the millions of people watching SNL three days before the election that there is essentially no difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden can only be described as deeply irresponsible." The joke was described by some as "tone deaf", while others praised Mulaney's allusions to the issues of wealth inequality and drug addiction and pointed out that Mulaney later urged viewers to vote. In a later appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Mulaney said he "deserved the backlash" and "forgot to make the joke good".
In June 2021, Mulaney appeared alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as openers for a concert featuring the Strokes, which served as a fundraiser for New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley. During the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, Mulaney was set to host a panel with Jon Stewart, to promote his comedy special Baby J. Mulaney cancelled the event in solidarity with the writers (both he and Stewart are guild members) and amid strike rules prohibiting members from making "For Your Consideration" appearances until an agreement is reached.
Filmography
Film
Television
Specials
Theatre
Video games
Discography Standup specials The Top Part (Comedy Central Records, 2009)
New in Town (Comedy Central Records, 2012)
The Comeback Kid (Drag City, 2017)
John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (Drag City, 2018)
John Mulaney: "Baby J" (2023)Musical Original Cast Album: Co-Op (Lakeshore Records, 2019)
John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (Drag City, 2019) Touring John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous (2017–2018)
Sundays with Pete and John (2019)
John Mulaney: From Scratch (2021–2023)
Awards and nominations
Mulaney has received numerous awards nominations and wins for his work in television. In 2009 Mulaney won a Peabody Award alongside the writers of Saturday Night Live for their satirical work on the 2008 United States presidential election. He has received many Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on Saturday Night Live and Documentary Now! He won his first Emmy Award in 2011 for co-writing the song "Justin Timberlake Monologue" with Seth Meyers and Justin Timberlake, which aired on Saturday Night Live. He won his second Emmy in 2018 for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for his standup special John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City.Primetime Emmy Awards'
References
External links
1982 births
Living people
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American male actors
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American screenwriters
American comedy writers
American male comedians
American male screenwriters
American male television actors
American male television writers
American male voice actors
American people of French descent
American people of Irish descent
American sketch comedians
American stand-up comedians
American television writers
Comedians from Illinois
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences alumni
Male actors from Chicago
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Screenwriters from Illinois
Shorty Award winners
St. Ignatius College Prep alumni
Writers from Chicago