Nick Kroll Was Scared John Mulaney Would Die So He Did Something

One of my best friends has always been on my ass about my vices and it can be f***ing annoying. The man used to smack my hand when I went to light a cigarette. One time, I brought a bottle of J&B Scotch home to an apartment we shared and happily told him about it, expecting him to share it with me. Do you know what he did instead?! He sighed, turned his chair away from his computer and toward me, looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Didn’t you just finish a bottle of booze you got a few days ago?” See?! Annoying! And do you know why? Because he’s been right every time!

I’ve been lucky enough to have a few people in my life like my best bud (his name’s Mikael, hey, pal). Another one of my best friends is my incredible wife. When we started dating, I was still smoking, much to her (and Mikael’s) chagrin. Both my wife’s parents smoked, and she didn’t want to be with someone who did as well. So, I stopped. It was early on in our relationship, but she seemed worth it (she was), and I still thank her for giving me the motivation to stop. She still insists it was “selfish,” but it still helped, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her, even if I was incredibly annoyed at the time.

Even when people are trying to help you with addiction, it’s hard not to get mad, because you’re addicted. They’re asking you to give up something you think you can’t live without, even if it could kill you. But they want what’s best for you. That was certainly the case with comedian Nick Kroll and his longtime friend, John Mulaney. Kroll notably orchestrated an intervention for Mulaney in 2020 and recently opened up about the experience on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert Podcast.

“It was so scary and brutal to go through,” Kroll explained. “He was in New York. I was in L.A. It was at the height of the pandemic. So it was incredibly stressful to be in the midst of that, trying to literally coordinate and produce an intervention, bringing a bunch of people together — friends from college, other close friends.” Kroll was also working on Don’t Worry Darling at the time. “There was no stress there,” Kroll joked, but continued saying, “John was running around New York City like a true madman. And I was so deeply scared that he was gonna die.”

Kroll was concerned for his friend and told him as much before the intervention happened. “I have a very clear memory of being outside of my house — someone was working inside, and we were still mid-pandemic. I just sat on the ground, on the phone with him, both of us crying,” Kroll recalled. “I said, ‘I’m so scared you’re going to die.’ And I could feel him feeling the same way, but also like — ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah… Anyway, I gotta go. I’m at a new Airbnb.’” I am quite lucky to have never gotten to a point Mulaney did, but he responded to being helped similarly (albeit with a bigger microphone).

“When he started doing stand-up again, and all of it was about the intervention, he was still pretty f***ing pissed,” Kroll noted. “He came back clean, but he was mad at us. And I was like, ‘Oh… I don’t know if I love that joke about me.’” But Kroll understands. Everyone deals with everything differently. “Everyone’s process and art is different,” he told Dax. “What makes [Mulaney] so funny and dynamic and intoxicating as a performer is that he’s giving you a written version of his life, access to elements of himself. And I myself am very guarded in certain ways.”

It’s important to have people in your life who look out for you. Kroll knows that. “I don’t think people hear enough from the folks who are terrified during these things,” he said on the pod. “Addicts talk about their experiences, often in brilliant, stand-up-ready ways. But there are also people in their lives who are just trying to keep them alive. That’s part of the story, too.” We could all use someone like Kroll in our lives. I’m lucky to have a few. Those who just want to make sure you stay on this plane of existence. “I just didn’t want to lose him,” said Kroll. “It’s that simple.”