It was a reference to his material designed to elicit an interesting answer. So David and I settled on opening with a callback to a bit in Mulaney’s Kid Gorgeous special about blurting out “You ever seen a ghost?” as an icebreaker. Two months before, he hosted Saturday Night Live, commenting on the current events I might have asked him about, and he’d also recently appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers. I wasn’t quite sure where to start with John.

A few months ago, I spoke to A$AP Rocky on the occasion of him designing a Mercedes for the Need for Speed video game we wound up having a poignant conversation about him approaching 10 years in the industry and his late friend A$AP Yams. It can be much more liberating to talk to an entertainer with no guardrails or boxes to check.

But when I spoke to John Mulaney, it was a rare case where there was no peg: His team had him doing press because he was reprising his role of Spider-Ham in an Into the Spiderverse videogame, but they were fine with me asking about whatever I wanted. As people in media know, interviews and profiles are usually “pegged” to a specific release or event that the writer is expected to ask the subject about.

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