John Mulaney returns to standup; says he relapsed after hosting SNL last October

Vulture

According to Jesse David Fox, Mulaney's first standup show since leaving rehab in February was on Monday night. "Candid, loose, sometimes hard to watch, sometimes so funny it made the audience convulse in laughter, it was a writing session," says Fox. "He was doing all-new material, not attempting to work in any of the jokes he was building in outdoor shows before rehab. It was raw, both in its frankness and in the complete lack of polish that we typically associate with Mulaney’s work. It was fascinating to see him try to figure out how to apply his stylistic signatures to more intensely personal subject matter." Fox adds: "Mulaney has had an incredibly difficult year. We knew that he had checked himself into a Pennsylvania rehab facility in mid-December for a 60-day treatment to address his addiction to alcohol and cocaine, and that he and his wife of seven years, Annamarie Tendler, were on the verge of divorcing; the latter news was confirmed the day of his first City Winery show. On Monday night, Mulaney opened up in ways no one had been expecting. He explained that he first fell off the wagon back in 2018 with pills before moving on to cocaine. He read aloud from a GQ interview he had no recollection of participating in, and he recapped how, after an initial stint in rehab in September, he relapsed after hosting SNL in late October, then began an unexpected stint as a writer-performer on Late Night With Seth Meyers the following month, to try to impose some structure on his life. In December, his friends staged an intervention that led to his second, publicized rehab stint, which lasted through late February. By the time of his first City Winery show, he told the audience, he was 141 days sober. At which point, we all clapped."