John Mulaney sat down with his close friend Seth Meyers on Tuesday night to open up about his recent struggles with substance abuse, his newfound triumphs, and to announce that he is expecting his first child with actress Olivia Munn.
“I got into this relationship that’s been really beautiful with someone incredible who has dealt with the non-coked-up Bambi version of me and that’s been very incredible,” Mulaney said. “She’s kind of held my hand through that hell and we are having a baby together.”
The 39-year-old recapped his chaotic past year for Meyers, explaining how he previously went to rehab for alcohol and cocaine abuse in September, and when he was released in October, he moved out of the home he shared with his ex-wife Anna Marie Tendler, before hosting Saturday Night Live on Halloween.
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“I relapsed on drugs after the show, not directly after. I just mean, well, after goodnights,” Mulaney awkwardly laughed, later admitting he was at the height of his relapse while working on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Following a downward spiral, his friends, including Meyers and fellow comedian Fred Armisen, staged an intervention that fall.
“I walk into the intervention, and I’m so mad,” Mulaney said, adding he was two hours late because he had stopped by Saturday Night Live’s hair department to get a free haircut while he was high.
“I didn’t want an intervention, I wanted to continue,” he said. “At that moment in time, I wanted to continue using drugs. Sitting here tonight, I’m so grateful to you and to everyone there for saving my life. That night, I was not grateful. And yet, as mad as I was, I looked around at the group and I was like, this is a good group. It was like a We Are the World of alternative comedians over the age of 40.”
Mulaney was in rehab for two months until February, then completed a stay in outpatient sober care. By the spring, he had begun dating Munn, who he first met at Meyers’ wedding to Alexi Ashe in 2013.
The new couple was romantically linked in May, spotted grabbing lunch in Los Angeles. Their sighting came the same month that Mulaney announced his split from Tendler, his wife of nearly seven years, and he filed for divorce in July. After leaving rehab Mulaney returned to the stage and began touring for his acclaimed new stand-up show “From Scratch,” which discusses his divorce and struggles with substance abuse.
Mulaney has long been open about his battles with alcoholism and drug abuse, telling Esquire in 2019 that he first started drinking when he was 13 years old, and turned to drugs shortly after. “I drank for attention,” he said. “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...I never liked smoking pot. Then I tried cocaine, and I loved it. I wasn’t a good athlete, so maybe it was some young male thing of, ‘This is the physical feat I can do. Three Vicodin and a tequila and I’m still standing. Who’s the athlete now?’”
Mulaney previously admitted the pandemic had taken a drastic toll on his mental health and led him down a slippery slope with his substance abuse. But now, Mulaney said he is relieved and happy to be on his journey of recovery.
“I love you, Seth,” he told Meyers at the end of his appearance. “You guys saved me from drugs, and Olivia and this baby have helped save me from myself. I don’t have a joke for that. I’m really grateful to you buddy.”
