Here’s What John Mulaney’s Dad Said When His Son Decided to Become a Stand-Up

To no one’s surprise, John Mulaney’s father Charles had a hilariously stern reaction to his son’s decision to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. One black coffee.

Like most comics, the younger Mulaney mines his family life for material when crafting his many hit specials, and, as a result, the people in his life have become characters in his act whom his audience will presume to know personally themselves. This has been a constant source of tension among the Mulaney fandom in the past couple of years, as, after cracking classic jokes about his ex-wife Anna Marie Tendler throughout his rise to superstardom, many vocal fans-turned-haters took Mulaney’s separation from the “bossy Jew” (his poorly-aged words) in 2021 as a personal betrayal, or like a writer killing off their favorite character. 

Well, parasocial stand-up fans, you don’t need to worry about the internet’s ex-boyfriend ever betraying conservative Catholic lawyer Charles W. Mulaney Jr. in the future – because John already did that when he became a comic. In a recent interview with GQ, Mulaney recalled his dad being aghast when Mulaney broke the news about his comedy dreams to his old man, as a confused Charles asked his son, “Best-case scenario, you’re like what, Steve Martin?”

I mean, yeah, that literally is the best case scenario.

The elder Mulaney's straight-edge seriousness has long been an inspiration for his unserious son's best bits, from the McDonald's coffee story to the Bill Clinton debacle, but Mulaney may not have ever made a single joke about his father that's funnier than the implication that a dad would be disappointed with his son if all he grew up to be was a world-famous and universally respected artistic genius.

Thankfully, that wasn't the only one of Charles' bangers that came up during the GQ talk – Mulaney's wife Olivia Munn even has a favorite story about her father in law that she was kind enough to share with the press. Apparently, when Charles was around seven years old, he begged his own father to let him start using an old briefcase as a school bag in lieu of a backpack. “I said, ‘Dude, did all the kids make fun of you?’” Munn recalls asking Charles. “And he said, ‘No. The next day they all had them too.’”

Mulaney made it clear that, despite his father's derisive comments on Steve Martin, Charles has come around on his famous son's choice in career. “I think he enjoyed seeing, ‘Oh, it’s a thing people do respect,’ which was fun for me to watch," Mulaney said, though he clarified that he didn't need anyone's approval to become a comedy superstar. "I didn’t need them to suddenly become stage parents or love everything I say or even think that comedy’s important, or some shit. I don’t need that.” 

It turns out Mulaney has more of a moral backbone than a chocolate eclair after all.