John Mulaney
John Edmund Mulaney 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 whom he and Bill Hader co-created. Since his departure from SNL, Mulaney has hosted the program six times, and became a member of the SNL Five Timers Club in 2022.
Mulaney's stand-up specials include The Top Part, New in Town, The Comeback Kid, Kid Gorgeous, and Baby J. He won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for Kid Gorgeous, Baby J, and SNL 50. Mulaney released a children's musical comedy special on Netflix, John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch.
He was the creator and star of the semi-autobiographical Fox sitcom Mulaney, which aired for one season. Mulaney also performed as George St. Geegland in a comedic duo with Nick Kroll, appearing on television and on Broadway in the show Oh, Hello on Broadway. Mulaney serves as a co-executive producer, writer, and occasional actor in the IFC mockumentary series Documentary Now!. He hosted, created, and executive produced the Netflix talk show Everybody's in LA and its spinoff Everybody's Live with John Mulaney.
Mulaney has taken guest roles in the Apple TV+ period series Dickinson, the FX dramedy series The Bear, and the Peacock crime series Poker Face. He also voiced Andrew Glouberman in the Netflix animated show Big Mouth, Peter Porker / Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Chip in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and Big Jack Horner in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
Early life and education
Mulaney was born on August 26, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois. Both of his parents are lawyers. His mother, Ellen Mulaney, is a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and his father, Charles "Chip" Mulaney Jr., is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. 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, Ireland. 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. 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: Stand-up career and comedy writer
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 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. After 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. He did not prepare any impressions, instead performing stand-up with "charactery bits in them". Mulaney went in with low expectations, but thought it would be a "cool story". He won a spot on the writing team, where he remained for four seasons, writing 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 worked 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. In May 2013, NBC passed on picking up Mulaney's semi-autobiographical sitcom pilot, Mulaney. The following June, 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 stardom
Mulaney's third comedy special, The Comeback Kid, was released on November 13, 2015, 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 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.In 2015, Mulaney served as a writer for the IFC mockumentary series Documentary Now!. The series was created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers. During the first season he served as consulting producer before becoming a co-executive producer. The series satirizes acclaimed documentary films. Mulaney has written five of the episodes, including "The Eye Doesn't Lie" which he co-wrote with Bill Hader in 2015, "The Bunker", "Parker Gail's Location Is Everything" and "Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid, Parts 1 & 2", the latter two written with Hader both in 2016. He wrote the episode "Soldier of Illusion, Parts 1 & 2" 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. 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".
File:2024-03-09 SXSW Conan Nick-Kroll Office-Space events 06581.jpg|thumb|left|170px|Mulaney collaborated with Nick Kroll on Oh, Hello sketch, tour and Broadway show
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 in which guests are given sandwiches with too much tuna fish. 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. 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 stand-up, 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 invited to appear to do stand-up at Jon Stewart's charity event Night of Too Many Stars on HBO, and Seth Rogen's charity event Hilarity for Charity on Netflix.
Mulaney provided the voice of a lead character on the animated Netflix series Big Mouth 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. In 2018, Mulaney provided the voice of Spider-Ham in 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 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 six times: on April 14, 2018; March 2, 2019; February 29, 2020; October 31, 2020; February 26, 2022; and November 2, 2024, making him the fourth SNL writer to host SNL. 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 Lives 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. 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. 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 was critically praised with critic Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone Magazine comparing it favorably to Galaxy Quest, The Princess Bride, or Jane the Virgin as "one of those gems that manages to simultaneously parody a genre and be an excellent recreation of it". Mulaney was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety Special and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special.