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 NBCsketch 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 six times, becoming a member of the SNL Five Timers Club in 2022.
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).[18][19] 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.[20] His confirmation name is Martin, after St. Martin de Porres, to honor his late brother Peter Martin, who died when Mulaney was four.[21][22]
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.[23] At age seven, he was a member of the Chicago-based children's sketch group "The Rugrats".[24] Because of this, Mulaney had an opportunity to audition for the role of Kevin in the film Home Alone, but his parents declined.[10] For junior high, he attended St. Clement School[25] 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.[10] At 14, Mulaney played Wally Webb in a production of Our Town.[26] 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.[10] 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.[8][27] He joined the school's improv group, and met Nick Kroll and Mike Birbiglia.[23] He later joined Birbiglia on his stand-up tour, which Mulaney cited as helping him overcome his stage fright.[23]
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.[10] 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.[28] Mulaney was working at the network when Dave Chappelle abruptly left. Initially, the network had planned to fly Mulaney out to Los Angeles 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.[29]
In May 2013, NBC passed on picking up Mulaney's semi-autobiographical sitcom pilot, Mulaney.[42] In June 2013, Fox ordered a new script while considering whether to order the production of several episodes.[43] In October 2013, Fox announced that it had picked up the show for a six-episode season order.[44] 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.[45] He has said he "wanted to do the type of live-audience multi-camera sitcoms that I grew up on".[46] The series received poor reviews,[47][48][49][50] 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."[51]
In 2015, Mulaney served as a writer for the IFCmockumentary 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 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 co-wrote the episode and the songs with Meyers. In the episode Mulaney plays the fictional Simon Sawyer, 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 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".[55]
Mulaney has performed as the character George St. Geegland, an elderly man from the Upper West Side of New York, since the early 2000s. St. Geegland hosts a prank show called Too Much Tuna with fellow New Yorker Gil Faizon (portrayed by Georgetown classmate and comedian Nick Kroll) in which guests are given sandwiches with too much tuna fish.[56] The characters were popularized on Kroll's Comedy Central series Kroll Show. 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.[57]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.[58] A second leg began in September 2017 in Colorado Springs, Colorado[59] and concluded in April 2018 in Jacksonville, Florida.[60] The tour featured seven shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in February 2018,[61] one of which was filmed for another Netflix special.[62]Kid Gorgeous met with critical acclaim,[63][64][65] with Steve Greene of IndieWire calling it "one of the year's best pieces of writing".[66] 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."[67] At the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards, Mulaney received an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for Kid Gorgeous.[68]
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 co-hosted the Independent Spirit Awards ceremonies with Kroll in 2017 and 2018.[73][74] In 2018, Mulaney provided the voice of Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.[75] He appeared in a Netflix and YouTube collaboration series hosted by Tan France, Dressing Funny, in June 2019.[76] In November 2020, Late Night with Seth Meyers producer Mike Shoemaker announced that Mulaney had joined the show as a staff writer.[77] Mulaney returned to voice Spider-Ham in the mobile game Marvel Contest of Champions, and the promotional animated short film Back on the Air.[78][79]
Mulaney returned to host Saturday Night Live six times: on April 14, 2018; March 2, 2019;[80] February 29, 2020; October 31, 2020;[81][82] February 26, 2022;[83] and November 2, 2024, making him the fourth SNL writer (after Conan O'Brien, Louis C.K., and Larry David) to host SNL.[80] As host, he performed in elaborate musical number sketches including "Diner Lobster", "Bodega Bathroom", "Airport Sushi", "New York Musical", "Subway Churro", and "Port Authority Duane Reade". Mulaney joined Saturday Night Live's Five-Timers 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 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.[84] 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.[85]
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.[91] In May 2021, Mulaney returned to stand-up comedy, working out new material titled John Mulaney: From Scratch.[92] He performed several sold-out shows at City Winery in New York City[93] before announcing a tour starting in Boston, where he sold out 21 shows.[94] Mulaney's tour From Scratch was scheduled to run from March through June 2022 with 33 shows.[95] Parts of the From Scratch routine were later used in Mulaney's 2023 special Baby J.[96]
In March 2023, it was announced that a new Netflix special from Mulaney, titled Baby J, was slated for release on April 25, 2023.[100] A teaser trailer was released on April 17, 2023.[101] 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."[96] 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.[102]
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.[103]
In 2023 he appeared as himself in the episode "Borgnine" of the Pete Davidson series Bupkis on Peacock. He guest starred in the episode "Fishes" in the Hulu series The Bear as Stevie, partner to the character Michelle Berzatto.[104] In April 2024, he announced a six part series called John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA, to be live streamed on Netflix for six nights during the Netflix is a Joke Festival in early May, 2024.[105] The series was well reviewed with Alison Herman of Variety describing the series as a "pop-up talk show", adding "with Everybody's in LA Mulaney is back on more comfortable ground: a throwback vehicle for exploring highly personal hobby horses, casting himself as a self-effacing but still smoothly composed master of ceremonies".[106]
In September 2021, Mulaney announced that he and his girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, were expecting a child.[115] On November 24, 2021, their first child, a son, was born.[116][117] Mulaney and Munn married in July 2024 in New York. [118] Their second child, a daughter, was born via surrogate on September 14, 2024.[119]
In 2014 on WTF with Marc Maron, he said his religious views more closely align with Judaism than the Catholic ideas of his upbringing.[120] In a 2020 Desus & Mero interview, he described himself as an atheist.[126]
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.[129][130]
^Jensen, Jeff; Maerz, Melissa (December 4, 2014). "5 Worst TV Shows of 2014". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 27, 2017.
^ abcde"John Mulaney (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved August 24, 2024. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.