John Mulaney enlisted several stars to appear on his Everybody’s in L.A. series — but he didn’t get everyone he wanted.
“David Lynch passed,” Mulaney, 41, told Deadline in an interview published on Friday, June 7. He said, ‘I don’t understand what this is. I’m working on new art and I have to keep my eye on the donut,’ which was the best pass. Everyone did pass in a nice way.”
Mulaney, who filmed the six-episode special during the Netflix Is a Joke Festival from May 3 to May 10, also noted that the filmmaker Werner Herzog passed.
“He said, ‘I have to keep away from the comedians,’” the former Saturday Night Live writer recalled, adding that the rock band Jane’s Addiction also declined his invitation. Meanwhile, M. Emmet Walsh, who he wanted on the show, died in March.
Mulaney hosted six episodes of Everybody’s in L.A., each of which featured a different theme, monologue, pretaped sketches and several guest stars and musical performers. Some of the guests included Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Will Ferrell, Jon Stewart, Gabriel Iglesias, Nate Bargatze, Sarah Silverman, Tom Segura, Ronny Chieng, Bill Hader, Pete Davidson, Hannah Gadsby and Mike Birbiglia.
Although the Netflix special turned out to be successful, Mulaney said he was still nervous to chat with one guest in particular: Letterman, 77.
“I worried that he’d be like, ‘Oh, you think you know how to run a weird show?’” he told Deadline. “I certainly wasn’t, but then again, I don’t think he nor I were trying to run a weird show. We’re trying to do a good show and those were the ideas we had and yeah, they’re weird.”
Aside from Everybody’s in L.A., Mulaney also made headlines for appearing in a season 2 episode of The Bear in June 2023, but he hasn’t confirmed whether he will return for season 3. (The comedian played the boyfriend of Sarah Paulson’s character, Michelle, who was a cousin of Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy, Abby Elliott’s Natalie and Jon Bernthal’s Mikey.)
“I know they’re filming a lot of stuff,” he said during an episode of Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast on Thursday, June 6. “I know they’re doing a lot and shooting a lot of episodes.”
Although he did not say whether he would make an appearance, Mulaney shared how much fun he had while filming The Bear.
“Sitting at that dinner table in between takes was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my career,” he explained. “When we were shooting — sitting down at the table from [Bob] Odenkirk at full throttle and Bernthal — and in the same room about to go at it was intense. And being yelled at by Donna, as Jamie Lee Curtis did, is like an Amtrak train going and not stopping at your stop. It blew me away.”
