John Mulaney Reveals How Lorne Michaels Helped Scare Him Straight
Comedian John Mulaney has had a chaotic past couple of years, having spectacularly fallen apart in the public eye via his rehabilitation for drug and alcohol abuse, the collapse of his marriage to now-ex-wife Anna Marie Tendler and his resurrection, of sorts, via the excellent Netflix comedy special Baby J (2023), in which he dives deeply into his issues with drugs—but stays away from touching the ex-wife stuff.
On the latest episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the talk show launched by David Letterman years after the conclusion of his legendary run of the Late Show, Mulaney shared how a well-timed phone call from Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels kept him in line as he worked towards recovery while in rehab.
Mulaney said that Michaels told him: “I knew John Belushi for seven years. I’ve been talking about him for 48 years. That’s the shrapnel that happens when someone goes down like that. John didn’t want to die. He didn’t plan to. Just because it’s a story, just because it’s set in stone like history, people don’t want to die from this.”