John Mulaney Addresses Addiction Battle In Touching And Funny Saturday Night Live Monologue

John Mulaney, wearing a suit, discusses his trip to rehab during SNL monologue.
(Image credit: NBC/ Saturday Night Live)

Longtime Saturday Night Live writer and popular stand-up comedian John Mulaney returned to the Studio 8H stage last night to host SNL for the fifth time. The show, of course, gave him a well-deserved five timers club sketch, but it was his hilarious and heartfelt monologue that really has fans talking. The new father who went to rehab during the pandemic talked very openly about his addiction battles and where he’s at in his life right now.

For roughly seven minutes, the comedian discussed his personal struggles. He talked about knowing he probably had a problem when he recognized he was getting an intervention as soon as he walked into his intervention. He talked about finding out his drug dealer only dealt drugs to him, and he talked about the connection he feels with his son after his favorite pacifier was recalled. You can watch John Mulaney open up and make the Saturday Night Live audience laugh below…

John Mulaney has gone through a lot since he first left SNL. He worked on the show’s writing staff for four seasons and made occasional appearances on Weekend Update. In the time since, he’s had his own sitcom, written for numerous other projects and churned out stand-up specials. He also went through a very public divorce, had a child with actress Olivia Munn and as referred to in his monologue, dealt with substance abuse issues for which he went to rehab in December of 2020.

The rest of Mulaney’s episode was good too. The show, in a really thoughtful gesture, brought on a Ukrainian choir. Mulaney also got his five timers club sketch, which included appearances from Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Steve Martin, Candice Bergen, Elliott Gould and Conan O’Brien. He also, of course, went to some weird places. He had a family reunion sketch where he talked and did the Cupid Shuffle the entire time. He did a musical about buying churros on the Subway, and he featured prominently in a Covid sketch about how complicated it is to talk about anything Covid-related with other people. You can check out that last one below...

SNL was off for awhile prior to John Mulaney’s episode last night, but it’ll be back on for a few consecutive weeks moving forward with some exciting upcoming hosts. Next week on March 5th, Oscar Isaac will host with musical guest Charli XCX. Then the following week, Zoe Kravitz will take the reins with musical guest Rosalîa. And then by that point, we’ll be smack dab in speculation season trying to figure out which stars are going to stay and which stars are going to go. 

Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.