Comedian John Mulaney Battles Public Scrutiny After Rehab By J1 Reporter Nina McMullen
A cold breeze sweeps through the 8th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or 30 Rock for short. A young John Mulaney, freshly hired and sporting a bright orange tee shirt, pops his head into an office. Not just an office, but Lorne Michaels’ office. Lorne Michaels as in the modern day father of comedy who created Saturday Night Live? Yeah, that Lorne Michaels. “You’re from Chicago?” Lorne asks, already knowing the answer. John, slightly stunned, responds “yeah.” “Well, now you’re here,” Lorne responds matter of factly with a tilted head and pouted face. “And your family is in Chicago?” He continues, once again, knowing the response. John, ever-confused, responds, “yeah, I’m the 3rd
of 4, I have 2 older siblings and…” Lorne cuts him off. “I know everything about you.” John is left not knowing what to think but he can assume the analogy-prone Michaels meant ‘I’ve met your kind many times.’ From the outside, John Mulaney is dubbed “America’s Sweetheart” and “Comedy’s Golden Boy.” But the view from outside is not even half of the story. Sure, this 39-year-old is a stereotypical Midwesterner, raised Irish Catholic, who is known to be about as square as a comedian can get. But those who follow his comedy know Mulaney to be open about his drug-fueled past. “Fourteen years ago I smoked cocaine
the night before my college graduation,” he shares in “Kid Gorgeous,” his Netflix comedy special, “Now I’m afraid to get a flu shot. People change.”
again in December 2020, it seemed like Mulaney would never take the comedy stage again. But the “Comeback Kid” did exactly that; he came back.
Mulaney started drinking at the age of 13, and by 23 was in recovery for drug and alcohol abuse. He relied on substances for social confidence. “I drank for attention,” Mulaney explains in a 2019 interview with Esquire, “I was really outgoing, and then at 12, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again.”
The line between saturnine dark humor and the Broadway-esque vivacity he typically brings to the stage is where his new comedy special falls, titled, “John Mulaney: From Scratch.” After attending the show at Arizona’s Federal Theater in Phoenix, it was clear that Mulaney is reinventing his brand and bringing a new tone of authenticity and reality to his comedy.
This stain on the comedian’s squeaky-clean past launched him into a year-long bender over 2020 and 2021. After checking himself into rehab once in September 2020 and
Photograph Courtesy of Lloyd Bishop John Mulaney on the set of Late Night with Seth Meyers Feb. 15, 2015. 72
The feel of the room was electric. All phones and recording devices were locked away upon entering the theater, so it was a pure connection between Mulaney
