Nick Kroll Recalls Orchestrating John Mulaney’s 2020 Drug Intervention: “So Deeply Scared He Was Gonna Die”

Nick Kroll is opening up about the drug intervention he orchestrated for his longtime friend and collaborator John Mulaney in 2020.

The Big Mouth co-creator and star got candid during a recent appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, where he recalled being “so deeply scared that he [Mulaney] was gonna die” at the time.

“It was so scary and brutal to go through,” Kroll said. “He was in New York. I was in L.A. It was the height of the pandemic. So it was incredibly stressful to be in the midst of the pandemic, trying to literally coordinate and produce an intervention, bringing a bunch of different people together, friends from college.”

To add to the stress, Kroll had a lot going on in his personal life as well, including his pregnant wife nearing birth and filming Don’t Worry Darling (“There was no stress there,” he quipped to Shepard, hinting at the film’s drama). And then he said Mulaney “was running around New York City like a true madman. And I was so deeply scared that he was gonna die.”

Kroll went on to talk about the processes of planning an intervention, which also led to a revelation. “You’re all of a sudden going back and being like, ‘Oh, that’s why I’ve had an inconsistent friend for the last X amount of time,’” he explained. “It gives you both empathy for them and also a tremendous amount of anger because they’ve been lying to you.”

The Red One actor also shared an emotional phone call he had with Mulaney shortly before the intervention. “I have a very clear memory of being outside of my house — someone was working inside my house, it was again [the middle of] COVID — sitting on the ground, on the phone with him, both of us crying, and me just being like, ‘I’m so scared you’re going to die,’” the comedian recounted. “And I felt him feeling the same way, but also like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…anyway, I gotta go. I’m in this new Airbnb.’”

Mulaney has previously detailed the experience of his intervention during his Netflix comedy special, Baby J. The intervention, which happened on Dec. 18, 2020, saw the comedian surprised by a group of friends, including Kroll, to address his misuse of cocaine, Adderall, Xanax, Klonopin and Percocet. He then spent two months in a Pennsylvania drug rehabilitation facility.

Kroll later noted on Armchair Expert that after rehab, it still took some time for them all to heal from the experience.

“When he came out of rehab and started doing standup all about it, he was still pretty fucking pissed about the intervention,” he said. “So he was pretty angry and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I like having jokes about me.’”

However, Kroll said he eventually recognized that the way everyone processes pain is different. “What [Mulaney’s] willing to share is what makes him so fucking funny and dynamic and intoxicating as a performer, that he’s giving you a written version of his life, but he’s giving you access to elements of himself,” he explained. “And I myself am very guarded in certain ways.”

Throughout their careers, Kroll and Mulaney have collaborated on several projects, including the Broadway play Oh, Hello and the Netflix series Dinner Time Live.