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0:23

John Mulaney wants to talk about

0:25

drugs. In his new Netflix special,

0:27

Baby J, he recounts the intervention

0:30

in late 2020 that sent him to rehab.

0:32

He talks about his resistance to giving up cocaine

0:35

and a variety of pills, his schemes

0:37

to avoid sobriety, and how it feels to

0:39

have your friends tell you how worried they are

0:42

over Zoom. I'm Linda Holmes, and

0:44

today we're talking about John Mulaney's Baby

0:46

J on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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1:24

Joining me today is NPR contributor Serena

1:27

Torres. Welcome back, Serena. Hey,

1:29

Linda. And also with us is Ronald Young

1:31

Jr. He's the host of the film and television

1:34

review podcast, Leaving the Theater.

1:36

Hi, Ronald. Welcome back.

1:37

Hi, Linda. Glad to be here. John

1:40

Mulaney has done several specials

1:42

for Netflix before Baby J, including

1:44

the variety special John Mulaney and the

1:46

Sack Lunch Bunch. He sometimes talked

1:48

about having given up drinking, and he had given

1:51

audiences glimpses of his life with

1:53

his then-wife and their dog. In

1:55

late 2020, he checked into rehab, and

1:57

in May of 2021, he confirmed... reports

2:00

that he and his wife had split up. Shortly

2:03

thereafter, he also confirmed that he was in

2:05

a new relationship with actress Olivia

2:07

Munn and that they were expecting a baby. Their

2:10

son was born in November 2021. The

2:12

special, Baby J, out on Netflix

2:15

now barely touches on Malini's personal

2:17

life, but it does acknowledge that his image

2:19

was affected by all these events

2:22

that landed him in gossip coverage

2:24

for pretty much the first time. Mostly

2:26

though, it is about rehab. He

2:29

talks in detail

2:29

about an intervention that was full of very

2:32

serious faced comedians. He tracks

2:34

his rocky experiences in rehab,

2:36

trying to get off of cocaine

2:38

and pills. And he even goes back to

2:40

his days as a very young drinker.

2:43

Ronald, I want to know what you thought about

2:46

Baby J. So before

2:48

I watched Baby J, I went back and watched

2:50

New in Town. New in Town is 2012, right? 2012. Yeah.

2:52

As a big fan of John

2:55

Malini. I love New in Town. I love the comeback

2:58

kid. I love Kid Gorgeous. So I just wanted

3:00

to get reacquainted with John

3:02

Malini as I knew him, you know, and also knew

3:04

from his SNL days as well. So

3:07

finished New in Town, still hits, still

3:09

a lot of jokes I love in there. And I start

3:11

Baby J. And I remember that

3:14

the start of the show was a little jarring for me

3:16

because it kind of starts like kind of like an epic

3:18

tale just in the middle. We're just in the middle

3:21

of a comedy special and he's kind of going

3:23

as it started. I remember thinking,

3:25

Oh, I don't know if I like this already. This feels

3:27

different from what he normally does. I don't

3:30

feel the same rhythm. And then at

3:32

one point he breaks into song.

3:35

Hey, Boston, it's

3:37

time to laugh. Raise up your smiles,

3:41

lower those masks. You know what

3:43

I mean? We all quarantined.

3:45

We all went to rehab and we all

3:47

got divorced and now our reputation

3:50

is different. He

3:53

did blossoms into the John Belady

3:55

that I've always loved. He breaks into

3:57

the cadence that he normally does. And

3:59

it all started

3:59

started to feel familiar to me once

4:02

again. That being said, this

4:04

is more what comedy is becoming, that

4:06

hybrid of storytelling plus jokes,

4:09

where he's telling us kind of a long story

4:11

here. And in a lot of ways, it reminded me

4:14

of the comedy special from Martin Lawrence

4:16

called Run Tell That. And it's the

4:18

same thing where you have a comedian telling

4:20

us a story that we've heard in the news from

4:23

their perspective. You know, I really

4:25

enjoyed that, but I did feel a little

4:27

bit of distance because he doesn't give

4:29

us a lot of details about his personal life,

4:31

even though there's a lot of those that are also swirling

4:34

around the rumor mill as well. So overall,

4:36

I think it's familiar. I think it was what I liked

4:38

of John Mulaney, but I definitely felt a

4:41

little bit of, I'm not gonna tell you everything. So

4:43

it felt like vulnerability minus

4:45

the vulnerability, if you know what I mean.

4:47

Yeah, I do. Serena, what'd you think? Yeah,

4:49

it's interesting because like Ronald, I've

4:52

also been a fan for a really long time. I

4:54

think the very first season I started watching

4:56

SNL was in 2008, which he was

4:58

a writer for. And I've always

5:00

really liked his comedy because

5:03

he's really good at spotting and

5:05

feeding the neuroses of the characters

5:07

that he does and playing the straight man

5:10

off of that. And this special

5:12

has an interesting

5:14

problem in its conceit that he

5:16

has to play both the straight man

5:19

of like the recovering addict, and

5:21

he has to play his past self who

5:23

is like in the throes of addiction. And

5:25

I don't know that it always works

5:27

for me because some points

5:30

the outlandishness

5:32

of his behaviors and particularly

5:34

his bit about trying to hawk his Rolex

5:36

watch, at a certain point the actions

5:39

are so outlandish that he stops kind of writing

5:41

the joke about it. And I decided I was

5:44

going to buy a Rolex watch with

5:47

my credit card and pawn

5:49

it for cash five

5:51

minutes later. I'm

5:54

pretty good at reading a room. You're all very

5:57

impressed by this plan.

5:59

He's great at delivering

6:02

a punchline, but I don't

6:04

know that there were as many punchlines as I was expecting

6:06

from him. He is on a very

6:08

different level and those jokes work because

6:10

of the way he tells them, but yeah,

6:13

I think it was missing a little bit of substance. I

6:15

felt like he was playing it safe a little bit. And

6:18

he almost builds in a deflection

6:20

of criticism here too because he kind of says like,

6:23

hey, if you liked that old stuff, well, I

6:25

was really hyped up on Coke when I was

6:27

doing that. So if you don't like the new stuff,

6:29

like, well,

6:30

you should probably be more supportive of my recovery

6:33

period. And so here I

6:35

do feel like he plays this in a way of like,

6:37

I'm not that guy anymore. I'm the new guy.

6:40

And I think it would have been more compelling

6:42

for him to have, you know, maybe spoken

6:44

about this of like, I did some bad

6:47

things and I'm still kind of working

6:49

through what that means for me as a person. Yeah,

6:51

it's interesting because I think that I agree

6:53

with you about one of the foundational

6:57

things about this special, but I think I

6:59

liked it and you didn't like it. And that is

7:01

the fact that he is basically both the

7:05

subject of the joke and the

7:07

teller of the joke. And the thing is,

7:09

you know, Malini has always done a certain amount

7:11

of this kind of describing his own

7:13

behavior in a way

7:16

that acknowledges that he is

7:18

the butt of the joke. I actually think he's

7:20

always been very good at that. One of the first

7:23

bits that I ever heard from him. It's

7:25

a little thing that he does about

7:27

realizing he was accidentally

7:29

chasing a woman in the subway. I'm

7:31

almost at her and then it dawns

7:33

on me. Oh, she's

7:37

running from me.

7:41

Because in her eyes,

7:44

I'm an adult. So what

7:46

I love about this clip is that he

7:49

really is making himself

7:51

and his own behavior

7:53

the butt of the joke. And he's done this

7:55

with various other things. In fact, one

7:57

of them is a clumsy effort.

7:59

to get a Xanax prescription

8:03

from a doctor. So this is not a first

8:05

for him. I feel like it's more a diving

8:07

in very deeply to something that he's always

8:09

done. And I feel like in a lot

8:11

of ways, this is sort of what comedy

8:14

is, is this combination of recognition

8:16

and distance. You know, a comedian

8:19

talks about something and you sort of recognize

8:21

it, but the way they talk about it allows you

8:23

to kind of step back and also laugh at it. And

8:25

I found it very effective to

8:28

see him kind of being both

8:29

people. And I thought that he did

8:33

a good job of, you know, I

8:35

don't know if I felt as much that

8:37

he's saying, like, I'm not that guy. I

8:39

think he's just realizing

8:41

what that guy was doing. And

8:44

he recognizes the ridiculousness

8:46

of it, but he also,

8:48

I think like is definitely using

8:50

it to kind of, as

8:53

Ronald was talking about, go through this story

8:55

that's been in the news. And I really

8:57

like the fact that there are moments in this

9:00

where he's able to step back and

9:03

recognize that there are still parts

9:05

of him that relate heavily

9:07

to John Mulaney late 2020,

9:09

early 2021. I

9:12

love the material about the intervention. He talks at

9:14

one point about exactly who

9:17

was present at the intervention.

9:19

As mad as I was when I walked in

9:21

there, I was like, this is a good lineup. This is really

9:24

flattering in his own way. It

9:26

was like a, we are the world of

9:28

alternative comedians over

9:31

the age of 40.

9:33

So to me, because he can

9:35

admit that it was a star-studded intervention

9:38

that allows you to get a really specific idea

9:40

of it. And later he talks about

9:42

the fact that now all these people who are

9:44

his friends, he kind of has to

9:47

act grateful to them all the time. I

9:49

liked that because it sort of acknowledges

9:51

that like there's still part of him that

9:53

like can see

9:56

humor in this that isn't only aimed

9:58

at himself, but it's still moving.

9:59

I think we saw this very

10:02

much the same way, Serena. It's just that it worked

10:04

for me much better than it worked

10:06

for you. I do agree with Ronald. It

10:09

reminded me of storytelling, you know, closer

10:11

to kind of these storytelling hybrid, you

10:14

know, almost like a Mike Birbiglia kind

10:16

of thing. He's also another one that tends to do

10:18

like a big overarching story.

10:21

I really liked it, but I agree with everything you

10:23

said about it in a way that led you to

10:25

have mixed feelings. Yeah, and I wonder if

10:27

it'll grow on me more, which I guess

10:29

maybe is my internal conflict right

10:32

now, where in the past when I saw

10:34

his specials, there was something like

10:37

white hot about them right in the moment where

10:39

I was like, oh, this is rearranging, you

10:41

know, my foundation of humor. And maybe that's

10:43

also because I was a lot younger when I watched them. I

10:46

was of the sort of formative age. We

10:48

have a lot in common. We both went to the same school

10:50

in DC. And I saw him when I was

10:52

in college do a live show in DC and,

10:55

you know, felt a sort of kinship where we were both

10:57

felt like a little bit of out of place about where we went to

10:59

school

10:59

and we're kind of like deconstructing

11:02

the people around us. Here, I

11:04

also wonder if these will grow on me more too,

11:06

because his specials have had such an afterlife

11:09

on the internet where I was thinking like, oh,

11:11

well, maybe this doesn't work for me as a special,

11:14

but some of his biggest bits

11:16

from his previous work, I don't actually

11:18

know how many people have actually gone back and watched those specials

11:20

because there are just certain clips that have gone super

11:22

viral on the internet. So maybe

11:25

in here, there are a couple of jokes that I

11:27

didn't fully lock into in the context

11:30

of his whole story, but, you know, seeing

11:32

them replayed on Twitter, I'll be like, oh, well, that was fantastic.

11:34

So I'm still mulling it over, I think.

11:36

I think you're right. I think this special will

11:39

be a hit. It will be another feather in

11:41

his cap. One thing they tell us in storytelling

11:44

is to tell stories from your scars, not

11:46

your wounds. And I think there's

11:48

a sense of separation that we're supposed

11:50

to think that John Mulaney has here that

11:53

makes him well enough to be able to tell these

11:55

stories completely. And

11:57

I think

11:58

joke wise, he. still as sharp as ever,

12:01

and I laughed a lot in this special. But

12:03

as a storyteller watching this, I

12:06

remember there was a couple times where I felt like there

12:08

was a little bit of a lack of self-awareness.

12:10

For instance, when he talks about how he procures

12:12

drugs, here he talks about Dr.

12:15

Michael. I'd go, I want

12:17

Klonopin! And he'd

12:20

go, okay. And

12:23

as he was writing it out on the pad and tearing it off,

12:25

he'd go, oh, what's it for? And

12:28

I'd go, I have anxiety. And

12:30

he'd go, oh, then you need it. I

12:33

really thought that at some point he would

12:36

reference how he was trying to get Xanax

12:38

in his first special in Newin Town. And

12:40

I really thought there for a moment, I was like, okay, so

12:42

there's no real note to like kind

12:44

of your overarching career or

12:47

how you were trying to do this before by getting

12:49

drugs for your anxiety. And that

12:51

idea and the second part is him not

12:54

like telling us everything, which you don't

12:56

have to do. And I'm actually

12:57

an advocate for saying, you should definitely have

12:59

some sort of separation between your personal life and

13:02

what you do want to tell us. But if you're being

13:04

this vulnerable and transparent about all these other

13:06

things, then it kind of makes the thing that

13:08

you're not telling us feel a little bit louder.

13:11

Because at one point you casually mention, I'm

13:13

strolling with my son. And I'm thinking,

13:15

we only know you have a son from the news. I've

13:18

never heard it from your mouth. I've never heard

13:20

it from the news or from like appearances

13:22

you've done, but as a person watching your comedy,

13:24

that's not news that you've given to me personally.

13:27

So he just kind of

13:27

drops it there and doesn't mention that this

13:29

was all a part of the story of his rehab,

13:32

of divorcing from his wife and all of that, which

13:34

is all deeply intertwined. But if you

13:36

only tell me one part of it, it just feels like the rest

13:38

of it feels loudly silent.

13:40

Yeah, I get that. You know, I've sometimes

13:42

seen people who have dealt

13:45

with some sort of, you

13:47

know, quote unquote scandal. Who

13:49

knows what that means. Something in their personal

13:51

life that's sort of gotten a lot of attention. I've

13:53

seen people kind of try to do a little

13:56

bit, but they draw a line

13:58

and they try not to say anything.

13:59

I think in a situation where, especially

14:02

where other people are involved, your ex-wife,

14:04

your current partner, your child, I

14:08

do understand deciding not to talk about

14:10

it. And there's part of me that thinks, if you're not gonna

14:12

talk about it, go out, make your

14:14

first special and don't talk about it at

14:17

all. And then rip the band-aid

14:19

off and people who expect to hear about

14:21

that are going to come in, they're

14:23

gonna watch the special and they're gonna realize he will

14:25

talk about this, he will talk about this, he will

14:27

be vulnerable about these five things. He

14:30

is not gonna talk about the ex-wife,

14:33

the current partner, the kid, he's

14:35

not gonna get into it. If you can live with that, then

14:37

you're gonna get a lot out of this special.

14:39

If you can't, you don't, because he's not gonna try to

14:41

sort of do enough.

14:43

You always get the feeling people are trying to kind of

14:45

take the air out of something like that without

14:47

getting too far into it. I think you're right, he

14:49

doesn't do that. He just kind of decides

14:52

to walk away from it. I found

14:55

that interesting. The thing that

14:57

I do think is too bad, and

14:59

I don't know that it would have been possible to do this without

15:01

getting into those things about other people

15:03

who are involved, he does make

15:05

a very quick reference to

15:08

likability as a jail, which

15:10

I think is a super interesting

15:12

idea that I

15:13

sort of agree with in his case

15:15

and a lot of other people's cases. I would

15:17

have loved to hear more about that, but

15:20

I understand why he didn't get into it.

15:22

In some ways, it would just make it worse to

15:25

get into it and kind of debate his persona

15:28

with people. So I was fascinated

15:31

by this. I really thought he

15:33

went to some interesting places.

15:36

You referenced, Ronald, the stuff about

15:38

Dr. Michael. I think there

15:40

is some funny detail in his explanations

15:43

of

15:43

sort of how a person

15:45

who really wants to get pills, how

15:47

easy it is to get pills, but also

15:50

how vulnerable it makes you to, for example,

15:53

a doctor who, and he

15:54

treats this fairly lightly, but

15:57

a doctor who was kind of sexually harassing

15:59

him.

15:59

And you can imagine, like,

16:02

if that's a reality for him, it's probably

16:04

a reality for a lot of other people. And

16:07

I think those details, there's

16:09

a little bit about Venmo that I thought was really

16:11

funny.

16:11

Yes, oh, yes. Venmo

16:15

is for drug deals. That's

16:18

what it was for. None of us in

16:20

the drug world have any clue

16:23

what all of you civilians... are

16:26

doing on our app.

16:28

Some of those details I

16:31

do think work really well. Yeah. And

16:33

I think, again, I'll say, like, funny. Like,

16:36

I'm 100% with you on saying it's 100% funny. And

16:39

I think the John Mulaney fan

16:41

in me is really just happy to

16:43

see him back and be sharp. I will

16:46

say, the part of me that is, like, really

16:48

considering what Serena is saying is saying,

16:50

like, as for your future,

16:53

is this what we can expect? Or what

16:55

is this going to look like? Are we going back

16:57

to the kind of king of observational comedy

17:00

or the prince of observational comedy if Jerry

17:02

Seinfeld is still alive? But, like, you know, the

17:04

kind of... Are we going back to this kind of

17:06

observational route that we're kind of used to, or what

17:08

happens next? Are there gonna be more things that you're reminding from

17:11

your life, or is it gonna be more, like, outward-focused

17:14

comedy after this?

17:15

Yeah, you know, to speak to Linda's point

17:17

about him kind of breaking the fourth

17:19

wall a bit about the persona, I

17:21

saw this opportunity in the special that

17:24

he didn't take to get a bit more meta

17:26

about it, and not necessarily bring

17:28

in the people in his life

17:30

by name, like his ex-wife or his current

17:32

partner or the baby. But

17:34

I do think, like, coming from the music world,

17:37

this decade, I would say so far, has been

17:39

really defined by this idea of meta-commentary

17:42

and about bringing in past

17:44

parts of your work to comment on now that

17:46

you're older. I'm thinking, like, Taylor Swift

17:48

or, like, R.M. of BTS

17:50

or, you know, even Shakira. And

17:53

the most compelling parts of the special to me are

17:55

when he kind of breaks the fourth wall a bit. You know,

17:57

there's a moment where he's interfacing.

19:09

I

20:00

imagine that in terms of his ability

20:02

to tell a story, he did this so well.

20:04

And all of the jokes that y'all pointed out, there was something

20:06

I forgot, like that Venmo joke was just brilliant.

20:09

Brilliant. So like,

20:11

yeah, I'm very interested to see like, what

20:14

happens next, not only for him, but for other comedians

20:16

who want to kind of like follow in this vein.

20:18

Yeah, and I was really struck by what

20:20

you said, Ronald, about right from your

20:22

scars, not your wounds, because what's interesting

20:24

about that is I often

20:26

feel that way when I see people writing,

20:29

like for example, a memoir

20:31

of something that still feels really, really

20:33

super fresh. And it always worries

20:36

me because I always think, I don't know if you have

20:38

the distance from this to talk

20:40

about it yet, which I think is one of

20:42

the reasons why I was glad that

20:44

this special doesn't really go in the direction

20:47

of saying, here are all the big lessons

20:49

that I've learned as a person

20:51

who deals with addiction, that

20:54

it really stays in the details

20:57

of being in rehab, dealing

20:59

with drug dealers, trying to

21:01

steal your own money. And I

21:04

think that's why it worried me less. I

21:06

was kind of doing the math in my head, like how long

21:08

ago was all this? It's difficult

21:10

and it does feel kind of dangerous

21:12

in that way. I feel like if you asked

21:15

him, could you ever relapse again, he would say, obviously.

21:18

You know what I mean? As opposed to like, oh, never,

21:20

I've learned so much now, I'm completely, that's

21:22

what would worry me more. I think

21:24

if you asked him, could you ever wind

21:26

up in this situation again, I doubt he would

21:28

say now. So, well, we want to know

21:30

what you think about John Mulaney's baby J.

21:33

Find us at facebook.com slash P-C-H-H.

21:36

That brings us to the end of our show, Ronald Young Jr.

21:38

Serena Torres. Thank you so much for being

21:40

here. It's always good to see you both. Thank you, Linda.

21:42

Thanks for having me. We want to take a moment to thank

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our pop culture, happy hour plus subscribers.

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We appreciate you so much for showing your support

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of NPR.