John Mulaney is an actor and comedian who has built a reputation as a storyteller who turns personal anecdotes into narratives and punchlines.
During his sets, he’ll slip into characters he’s met, past versions of himself and relive vulnerable moments in his life. This approach to comedy has given him a massive fanbase.
Mulaney has been a writer on and hosted SNL, he’s released several standup specials and has won multiple Emmy awards.
He’s also in Texas right now for the Mister Whatever Tour, his latest standup special, and joined the Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: This is called the Mister Whatever Tour. Where did that name come from?
John Mulaney: That is the name of the tour. There’s no great reason for it. A lot of my early specials were called “kid” or “baby” something. And I guess that I’ve grown up a little. I’m sort of a guy now, not quite a man, in between stages. Mr. Whatever sounded appropriate.
You’re a mister, I get it.
You know, I am now a parent wherein sometimes children call me “Mr. Mulaney” and I don’t really tell them to call me John, because they’re so little that would be wildly inappropriate. So I guess I should tell them, you know, “you can just call me Mr. Whatever” or something.
The way you seem to approach comedy, and I think it’s hard sometimes hard to do this, you weave in a lot of your own sort of narrative, but there’s a lot of observational humor.
Yeah, well I don’t have a ton of life experiences that are interesting. I do have life experiences and normally, in while describing them, note that I was thinking about a TV show or a movie at the time or weave in a lot of other things happening in the world because the actual events of my life aren’t normally that exciting.
Well let me turn the tables here a little bit about your impressions, in particular of Texas. Have you been here very often?
The first club I ever headlined in my life was the Laff Stop in Houston in 2007.
What’s your takeaway when you think of Texas? What comes to mind?
I think of Texas as this father with like a bunch of different sons that are his cities. And, you know, Dallas is like trying to do everything right and run the family business and is responsible with money and Houston has a good job but is just boring as hell.
Austin is like the little more emo kid at the end of the table that’s like, “What did you do today, Austin?” He’s like, “I colored” – a sort of artistic, libertarian son at the end of the table that does whatever he wants.
You’re gonna be going to San Antonio. You don’t wanna say anything about San Antonio here?
I love San Antonio. San Antonio’s like that kid that’s just always fine but doesn’t visit a lot.
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Did you do anything special for this tour as you were setting it up or were you looking at some of your past stuff and bringing it together? I know that you at least have a reputation for really fine tuning your act.
It’s funny, like we’re the reverse of musicians. We tour and tour and tour and then record the special, whereas musicians record the album and then play the album as they recorded it. We’re putting it in the studio the whole time through the tour, putting the hour together.
Where exactly do you see this going? Are you thinking about a special that’s gonna come out of this tour or is that already in the planning stages?
I haven’t picked a date or a place to shoot it, but I bet I’ll record a special. You know, I’m touring through next summer and fall, so I’m doing like Wrigley Field in July.
I think you’re the first comedian to do Wrigley Field. How did that happen?
Wrigley Field is great. It’s owned by the Cubs organization and they, you know, I’m from Chicago and they obviously knew that and they offered it to us and-
Hometown boy makes good kind of thing.
Hometown boy makes good. And you know what’s cool about Wrigley is, you know, it’s built a little over a hundred years ago and is kind of shaped like an amphitheater, so it’s good for sound. And when the walls are low enough, because it’s an older park where the wind will sometimes carry the game into the neighborhood, like you can hear it.
So my set, you might not need a ticket and you could stand on the street.
I can’t let you go without asking you about this because recently here, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas unveiled the Lorne Michaels collection – Lorne’s papers.
I know you were a writer on SNL for a while. Any thoughts on Michaels and his impact on comedy?
Well, the impact is enormous and I feel like it was kind of fun, about the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, is we got to pay tribute to him a lot.
But I’m breaking into the Ransom Center at night and seeing if there’s any inter-office memos about me. I just wanna find a piece of paper that says, you know, “John’s my favorite writer” and then I’ll steal it and I’ll be content with myself for life. But I can’t wait to break in and loot the papers.
