John Mulaney

John Edmund Mulaney (born August 26, 1982) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is best known for his work as a writer on Saturday Night Live and as a stand-up comedian with stand-up specials The Top Part, New in Town, The Comeback Kid, and Kid Gorgeous, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special in 2018. He was the creator and star of the short-lived Fox sitcom Mulaney, a semi-autobiographical series about his life. Mulaney also frequently performs as a character called George St. Geegland in a comedic duo with Nick Kroll, most recently in Oh, Hello on Broadway from September 2016 through early 2017. He is also known for his voice acting work as Andrew Glouberman in the Netflix original animated show Big Mouth. Mulaney made his film debut in 2018, voicing Peter Porker/Spider-Ham in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Early life
Mulaney was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ellen (née Stanton), a law professor at Northwestern University, and Charles "Chip" Mulaney, Jr., an attorney and partner at Skadden Arps. His parents are of Irish Catholic descent. Mulaney's maternal great-grandfather was George J. Bates, a Republican mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, who also served as a congressman from that state. His maternal great-uncle is William H. Bates, who also served as a U.S. congressman. Coincidentally, Mulaney's 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 both attended Georgetown University and Yale Law School with future president Bill Clinton, whom Mulaney met in 1992. Growing up, Mulaney was an altar boy. He is the third of five children. He has two brothers, one of whom is deceased, and two sisters.

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 the age of five. At the age of seven, 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 in the format of a skit. Mulaney would also frequent the Museum of Broadcast Communications, where he would watch archived episodes of shows such as I Love Lucy or The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He attended St. Ignatius College Prep where he graduated in 2000. Mulaney then enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Georgetown University, where he studied English Literature and Religion. He joined the school's improv group, and met Nick Kroll and Mike Birbiglia. He later joined Birbiglia on his stand-up tour, which improved his stage presence.

Career
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 the I Love the '80s called I Love the '30s, which he developed along with fellow comedian Nick Kroll.

Comedy Influences
When asked about his comedy influences, he is quoted as saying he "always loved stand-up albums...growing up in the ‘90’s, I would sit on the floor with my Discman and listen to comedy albums that I bought." Mulaney has been a long time collector of stand up albums. He has mentioned loving Chris Rock's Bring the Pain (1996), and Bigger & Blacker (1999), as well as Woody Allen's Comedian (1965) album, and Albert Brooks' Comedy Minus One (1973). He has also mentioned listening to a lot of Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Bob Newhart.

Saturday Night Live
After first working as a commentator on Best Week Ever, Mulaney auditioned for Saturday Night Live in August 2008, along with Kroll and T.J. Miller. Mulaney won a spot on the writing team, where he remained for six seasons. 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 2009–2012. Mulaney won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards with Justin Timberlake, Seth Meyers and Katreese Barnes. Mulaney returned to host Saturday Night Live twice on April 14, 2018 and March 2, 2019, making him the fourth SNL writer (after Conan O'Brien, Louis C.K., and Larry David) to host SNL despite never having been a cast member.

Work after Saturday Night Live
Following his tenure at Saturday Night Live, 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. Mulaney currently provides the voice of a lead character on the animated Netflix series Big Mouth alongside his writing partner Nick Kroll, who co-created the show. In 2018, Mulaney provided the voice of Spider-Ham in the Academy Award-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse animated film.

Stand-up comedy
In addition to his work on SNL, Mulaney has worked for a number of years as a stand-up comedian. 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 a stand-up comedy album titled The Top Part in 2009, and a stand-up comedy special called New In Town in 2012. Both were produced with Comedy Central. He frequently tours his comedy shows, sometimes with his Mulaney co-star Seaton Smith. He performed at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival.

Mulaney's third stand-up comedy special titled 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." 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.

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 September 2017 in Colorado Springs, Colorado and concluded 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 was met with critical acclaim,  with Steve Greene of IndieWire calling it "one of the year's best pieces of writing." 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 stated, "John Mulaney, this is the future of comedy ladies and gentlemen."

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.

Mulaney
In May 2013, NBC passed on picking up Mulaney's semi-autobiographical sitcom pilot, titled Mulaney. In June 2013, Fox Broadcasting Company ordered a new script while considering whether to order the production of several episodes. In October 2013, Fox announced that they picked up the show for a six-episode season order. Mulaney was the creator, producer, and writer of his eponymous series until its cancellation in May 2015. Mulaney is quoted as saying 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."

George St. Geegland
Mulaney regularly performs as George St. Geegland, an elderly man from the Upper West Side of New York. St. Geegland and fellow New Yorker Gil Faizon (portrayed by Georgetown classmate and comedian Nick Kroll), host a prank show called Too Much Tuna in which contestants are given sandwiches with too much tuna fish. Mulaney has toured the United States alongside 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 towards the end of the special.

Personal life
On July 5, 2014, Mulaney married makeup artist and lampshade artisan Annamarie Tendler. Their wedding ceremony was performed by friend Dan Levy.

Mulaney had a drinking problem in the past and no longer drinks alcohol.

Discography

 * The Top Part (Comedy Central Records, 2009)
 * New in Town (Comedy Central Records, 2012)
 * The Comeback Kid (Drag City, 2017)
 * Kid Gorgeous  (Drag City, 2018)