Even though John Mulaney declared his new live show on Netflix will “never be relevant” and that the streamer “will always provide us with data that we will ignore,” its executives still managed to be surprised.
In a new profile for Vulture that goes inside Mulaney’s writers’ room, the comedian revealed that unnamed execs opined that his first guests weren’t quite buzzy as the streamer had hoped they would be.
After Michael Keaton, Fred Armisen and folk singer and activist Joan Baez (who promptly derailed the show with a rant against Donald Trump), were announced as Mulaney’s featured guests on Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney’s premiere last Wednesday, the Saturday Night Live alum told the site Netflix expressed some buyer’s remorse. It was “the funniest call with Netflix,” Mulaney said, where execs told him, “This is not the show we sold.”
“It was great to see someone kind of apoplectic,” Mulaney said of the call, recalling he that he thought to himself, “‘Oh honey, do you know what you bought?’”
The host added that he doesn’t expect his unorthodox live show to impress anyone. “The show’s not good, guys,” he said during a writers’ room session. “That’s the thing about the show, is it’s not like, Oh, this is awesome! It’s great, but it’s not good.”
Mulaney did admit that talking down the show may be a bit of a defense mechanism when he added, “I can protect myself by acting like we just think it’s weird, and that way you can’t criticize it in the same way.”
The monologue from his first episode reflected that mindset too, when he told viewers, “We’ve been working on this episode all day. Some crew got here as early as 9 a.m.”
Mulaney feels that not impressing Netflix and flying by the seat of his pants a bit is what will make the show work, however. He explained in the profile, “Whether something’s good or people like it is so ephemeral. If they could possibly predict it with data, they’d have more hits.”
Not that that’s a dig at his show’s home, he clarified. “I don’t mean Netflix. I mean everybody.”
