John Mulaney Regrets Leaving ‘SNL’ When He Did
John Mulaney is obviously known for his stand-up comedy, his occasional acting roles and for the time that he needlessly defamed the entire “horse in a hospital” industry.
This week, Mulaney will be live on Netflix, premiering the new iteration of his unhinged talk show, which ran for six episodes last year. Like 2024’s Everybody’s in L.A., Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney will feature celebrity guests, as well as phone calls from viewers. One of this week’s guests is legendary folk singer Joan Baez, meaning that there’s a non-zero chance that Mulaney will field another call from friend of the show “Bob Dylan.”
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But before all that, a lot of people first found out about Mulaney because of Saturday Night Live, where he worked as a writer, sometimes popping up on camera to, say, rant about the availability of Girl Scout Cookies.
Mulaney’s SNL employment lasted from 2008 to 2012. But, according to the comedian, he wishes that he’d stayed longer.
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Mulaney was asked what advice he would give to his 2008 self, back when he was preparing to audition for SNL — a question that somehow failed to acknowledge Mulaney’s previous auditions in 2004, 1986 and 1975.
Somewhat surprisingly, Mulaney suggested that he would have advised his past self to stay at SNL even longer. “As soon as you’re ready to leave Saturday Night Live, stay one more year,” Mulaney stated. “I wish I had. I didn’t realize that when you feel burnt out is not the moment to make a decision like that.”
As for non-SNL matters that could have been addressed via time travel, Mulaney pointed out that “there were obviously a lot of twists and turns (in my life) after 2008-9, but I don’t know if the advice would’ve stuck. It wasn’t really an ‘advice would’ve solved that’ situation.”
His regrets about leaving SNL are a little surprising considering that, by the time he quit, Mulaney was already finding huge success as a comedian thanks to his second stand-up special, John Mulaney: New in Town, which came out in 2012.
Also, it’s not like Mulaney cut ties with the show permanently after quitting the writing job. If anything, he became much more of a visible SNL fixture after he left, returning to host the show six times, and even appearing in the SNL50 monologue alongside Steve Martin, to the enjoyment of everyone except the ghosts of O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake.
Perhaps Mulaney regrets leaving SNL so soon because he knows that he could have gotten his “Werewolf Island” sketch on the air had he stuck it out.
