Celebrity
John Mulaney Knew His Way Around A Changing Table Before He Was A Dad
“You think you’re supposed to put a human baby on that mouse trap of a device. They have gang signs carved into them. Those are for snorting coke off of.”
After a difficult few years that included a divorce, an intervention, and a stint in rehab, John Mulaney has made his long-awaited return to comedy with his new Netflix stand-up special, John Mulaney: Baby J. The 40-year-old comedian talks at length about his drug addiction throughout the incredibly candid special, including a full circle moment he’d had with a changing table once he got sober and became a father to his son Malcolm.
In Baby J, filmed in February of this year at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Mulaney admits he was addicted to cocaine as well as several prescription drugs including Adderall, Xanax, Klonopin, and Percocet. He also detailed the desperate lengths he’d go to feed his addiction. For example, he pawned a $12,000 Rolex watch he’d bought on a credit card just moments earlier for half its value to get some quick cash. He had maxed out his weekly Venmo transfer limit buying drugs. And he did a “bunch” of cocaine on his way to rehab after his comedian friends including Nick Kroll and Fred Armisen staged an intervention for him.
“I did a bunch [of cocaine] at a gas station in the bathroom off of one of those Koala baby changing stations,” Mulaney recalls. “What? That’s what those are for. You think you’re supposed to put a human baby on that mouse trap of a device. They have gang signs carved into them. Those are for snorting coke off of. When you’re a coke head, you see the world in terms of surfaces.”
Out of rehab, sober, and now a dad to his son Malcolm, whom he welcomed with his girlfriend Olvia Munn in 2021, Mulaney talked what it was like to actually need those changing stations to, you know, change a diaper. Later in the special, Mulaney shares that he was at a museum in Detroit with his son, who was 9 months old at the time and needed a diaper change.
“I’d never been out with him and had to change a diaper alone in public before,” Mulaney recalls in Baby J. “So, I went up to the museum docent and I said, ‘Is there anywhere I can change my baby?’ and she goes, ‘Yeah, the men's room would be fine.’ And I push him in the men’s room. And I walk in there, and I look on the wall... ‘Hello, old friend.’”
“My life is in a much, much better place now.”
John Mulaney: Baby J is streaming on Netflix now.
