John Mulaney Jokes About Intervention In ‘Saturday Night Live’ Monologue

On Saturday, February 26, comedian John Mulaney officially returned to the “Saturday Night Live” stage to become a part of the Five-Timers Club.

Although the episode began with a poignant tribute to Ukraine, many fans of the long-running comedy sketch show were either looking forward to or dreading Mulaney’s return to the stage. After getting out of rehab last year, Mulaney called it quits with his wife of six years, Anna Marie Tendler, and had a baby with actress Olivia Munn at the end of November. His divorce with Tendler was not finalized until January of this year.

During his “SNL” monologue, Mulaney spoke about his intervention, breaking up with his drug dealer, and the birth of his first son, who he named Malcolm.

“For many, many reasons, I’m grateful to be here tonight after a complicated year, it’s wonderful to be in a place that’s always emphasized sobriety and mental health,” Mulaney began. “Since I last hosted, different things have happened.”

“In December of 2020, I went to dinner at a friend’s apartment. But it was not a dinner. It was an intervention. For me. My least favorite kind of intervention,” he joked. “When I walked into my intervention, I knew right away that it was an intervention. Do you know how bad of a drug problem you have to have if when you open a door and see people gathered, your first thought is, ‘This is probably an intervention about my drug problem’?”

“I walk in,” he continued. “There were six of my friends in New York in person and six of my friends over Zoom from L.A. And you may be thinking, hey, if that was me, I would have been like, ‘If you’re so worried about me, how come you didn’t fly in?’ Don’t worry. I said that several times. I rang that bell as often as possible.”

“I went away to a rehab, which was a very good experience,” he continued. “I’m very grateful that I went. I was there for two months, from December to February 2021.”

“One thing did in rehab is you sit down with a counselor and you go through your phone and you delete and block all of your drug dealer’s phone numbers,” he explained. “In some cases, you reach out to your drug dealers and say, ‘Please never contact me again. I’m sober now.’ It’s called ‘breaking up with your drug dealer.’”

“So I did this one afternoon,” he recalled. “I sat down with a counselor. I texted my main dealer Arvin first – I shouldn’t have said his name – and I said, ‘Hey, I’m deleting and blocking you. I’m sober now. I’m never going to buy drugs again.’ And then I’m really polite, so I didn’t know how to end the text, so I was like ‘But thank you for all of the nights that became days and your inspired professionalism.”

“So I send the text,” he continues. “Before I can delete and block him, he texts me back. He goes, ‘Hey, I’m so proud of you. I’m so happy that you got sober. You know, I only bought drugs to sell to you because I was worried about you and I didn’t want you to get worse stuff off the street.”

“I know,” Mulaney responds to the audience’s laughter. “So I can’t block him now. I text him back, you know? And I go, ‘Oh my god, you sweet man. You only bought drugs to sell to me?’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Did you sell drugs to other people?’ He said ‘No.’ I said, ‘This is a weird time to ask. But are you a drug dealer?’ He said ‘No. I’m a painter. We talked about this.’”

“Ladies and gentleman, I have no idea how I know this person,” Mulaney announced. “So I text him. I go, ‘How did it come to be that you sell me drugs?’ And he wrote back, ‘I don’t know. You just kept asking.’ I like that story because there are many tales of drug dealers who have turned innocent people into drug addicts. I might be the first drug addict to turn an innocent man into a drug dealer.”

“Life is a lot better and happier now,” Mulaney continued. “I have a 12-week-old son. I’m very excited. He’s a pretty cool guy for someone who can’t vote. His legs are like little calzones and I want to eat them.”

“His name is Malcolm and let me tell you the moment when I first bonded the hardest with Malcolm,” he says. “We were in the delivery room. My girlfriend had just given birth to him. And he’s crying a little so they bring him over to this warmer on the other side of the delivery room and they put him on the warmer under this big bright light and light is just shining in his eyes. It’s really bright. He’s not crying. He just looks up into the light and this is what he does.”

Mulaney mimes making a face of discomfort as he shields his eyes with his arm.

“He was annoyed but he didn’t say anything,” Mulaney recalled. “And I was like, ‘That’s my son.’ A polite man in an uncomfortable situation but he’s not going to make a fuss. And it was a super bright light and I’d seen lights. He’d never seen any light in his life.”

“He’s a very good boy,” Mulaney continued. “His favorite pacifier just got recalled though. It’s such a bummer. He loved it. So we have a dozen of them in a basket on our counter and I see this look in his eyes all the time like, ‘I want to use those but I can’t because they could kill me.’”

“‘Welcome to my world, homie,’” Mulaney joked.

Fans can watch the video of the full monologue below: