JOHN MULANEY
If you were to ask a child to draw a stand-up comedian, you’d get something like John Mulaney—clean-cut in a suit and tie with the odd funny detail like ears that stick out a little further than necessary and a line for a mouth that’s about to either break into a smile or an anxiety attack. Like Seinfeld was in his era, Mulaney is the Platonic ideal of a stand-up comedian to a younger generation. On specials like The Top Part and New in Town, he shows a gift for both storytelling and spinning pop-culture ephemera into bits that outlast their inspiration. Before he comes into Calgary on his Kid Gorgeous Tour, this is what you should know.
Blacking out and making money While he looks like he’s perpetually running off to picture day at school, Mulaney wasn’t always this put together. At 13 years old, Mulaney was drinking too much. By the time he got to college, he had developed a healthy appetite for cocaine. And while his friends moved on with their post-college lives, Mulaney’s substance abuse overtook his life. At age 23, he got sober. While he had only dabbled in comedy at the time, he dedicated himself to writing and standup as a way to avoid his previous lifestyle.
Trying his best Mulaney’s comedy career actually started when he was seven, performing sketch comedy as part of a children’s theatre program in Chicago, and earning $2 a show. He wouldn’t perform again until his first year at Georgetown University, when he joined the Georgetown Players Improv Troupe. In that group, he met future comedy stars Nick Kroll (with whom he co-created the Broadway hit Oh Hello, which is debuting on Netflix on June 13) and Mike Birbiglia. Mulaney would eventually follow his friends to New York to pursue and surpass their stand-up comedy dreams.
This place has everything After a spot on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and impressing Seth Meyers at the improv show ASSSSCAT, Mulaney was asked to audition for SNL in 2008. While passed over for the cast, he was offered a writing job he wasn’t sure he wanted. Mulaney admits to not being very competitive and trying to avoid conflict as much as possible. He didn’t want any part of the backstabbing and cutthroat politics at SNL he had read about. Fellow comedian Dan Mintz convinced him to take the job, reasoning that it would look good on his resume. That resume now includes a four-year run on the show during which he helped create such characters as Stefon and the misanthropic newscaster Herb Welch. — Alan Cho