John Mulaney might have trouble sharing some of his intimate thoughts with individual people in his life, but revealing his darkest moments on stage? No problem!
“I have trouble telling maybe three people something personal,” the comedian told his host, Stephen Colbert, during Thursday’s The Late Show, “but telling, like MSG, 12,000 people, is very comfortable—and that might be a real sickness.”
The two had been discussing Baby J, Mulaney’s most recent stand-up special for Netflix, which Colbert watched live at Madison Square Garden. In the special, Mulaney discusses his struggles with addiction, his rehabilitation and recovery, and welcoming a child with his girlfriend, Olivia Munn. During the comedian’s Late Show appearance, Colbert asked him what he’d learned about himself during this time of introspection.
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Mulaney’s answer was simple but meaningful: “I am a happy person.”
He continued, “I have for some reason set up obstacles in my own way that have left me sometimes ... pretty disoriented and pretty unhappy. But I am at my core a happy person, and it’s OK for me to protect that by living the life I want to live. I am very lucky I have a very good life, and I don’t want to be the reason that that gets complicated.”
The two also discussed a text message Colbert sent to Mulaney while he was going through a rough patch.
“I was going through a lot,” Mulaney said, adding that while he wasn’t worried that Colbert wouldn’t have compassion for his situation, his opinion “means a lot to me, and when you reached out, it was extra special in a way.”
In December, Mulaney will have been sober for three years, he told Colbert, and right now, there is plenty in his life to keep him occupied—including his son, Malcolm, who, like his father, is a “really, really happy guy.”
During the writers strike, he recalled, “we would walk to the donut shop, walk to the 7-Eleven to get scratch-off lottery tickets. He walks next to me, he wears a baseball hat, and we talk the whole time. Later in the day while he’s asleep, I’ll be talking to Olivia and I’ll be like, ‘Who was I talking to earlier about how if we put that there, it'll blow away? Oh yeah, that was Malcolm.’”
Also keeping Mulaney busy? His new BFF, Munn’s mother—who has apparently gotten him hooked on Korean cinema. Although the two watch a couple films together each night, Mulaney revealed that Munn herself is less interested.
“She once found a notepad I had with a list of Korean movies that I had read good things about to watch with Miss Kim,” the comedian recalled with a laugh, “and she said ‘This is more effort than you’ve put into any of our date nights.’”
One night, Mulaney’s cinematic journey with “Miss Kim” took them somewhere very awkward: They watched The Handmaiden together, unaware that the film is a lesbian erotic thriller. As Mulaney put it, “I was like, truly, this is what people mean by ‘erotic.’”
He added: “There’s a very intense—I can’t say any more about it—very intense, they're right against each other, very serious, very physical. I look over, Miss Kim and I are under the same blanket... Olivia’s mom looks over to me and goes, ‘I think they’re a little bit lesbian. What do you think?’”
A full house, a delightful son, and a new movie buddy? It doesn’t get much better than that.
