Olivia Munn has played a huge role in John Mulaney’s sobriety journey.
Mulaney, 42, was named GQ’s 2024 Man of the Year on Tuesday, and the couple spoke to the publication about how far the comedian has come since he went to rehab for two months for substance abuse issues in December 2020.
They revealed that when Munn, 44, was six months pregnant with their son, Malcolm, who was born in Nov. 2021, the actress staged a mini-intervention for her now-husband.
Munn also started randomly drug testing Mulaney — and she’s continued to do so as they stay on top of his sobriety.
“It’s like a relief,” said Mulaney. “I like to be able to not even have that be a question in her or anyone else’s mind. Something about peeing in that cup is like, I’m walking this walk. It gives me confidence.”
Munn started dating Mulaney shortly after he left rehab in 2021. They’ve since gotten married and had two children together. Their daughter, Méi, was born via surrogate in September.
The “X-Men: Apocalypse” actress told GQ that she “barely knew” Mulaney when she got pregnant with their first child.
“It wasn’t necessarily, ‘We’re going to be married and live together’ or any of that, but it was, ‘I will be involved in some way,’” she said, noting that the couple later decided to raise their child together.
Speaking more about what Mulaney was like post-rehab, Munn said, “It was like watching a man in a tsunami. I was watching someone newly sober, at the edge of a cliff, and I didn’t know him well enough to help him.”
However, Munn said that their baby news was “the one thing that made him seem light and happy. I remember he was really excited to tell his parents.”
Mulaney has been open about his sobriety journey over the years. He was an addict at a young age and first got sober when he was 23.
“There was a time when I would have told you that I could not fly, sleep or perform unless I had a Klonopin,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum told GQ. “I would have said, ‘It sucks because I don’t always want to take Klonopin and Xanax, but I have to.’”
Mulaney also recalled the night that he thought he was going to overdose on cocaine at his NY apartment.
“I left the door to my apartment open. I can’t explain the logic, but I was going to hit the door buzzer and tell the doorman to run and get the paramedics,” he explained. “I think I was worried I wouldn’t be able to dial and explain, and I didn’t want them to have to break the door down. I just sat on the rug and slowly came down. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is insane. I’m going to totally slow down.’”
“That was like a Tuesday. And Thursday night, I did it again,” he added.
While appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in Oct. 2023, Mulaney opened up about achieving sobriety.
“I am a happy person,” the father of two said. “I have, for some reason, set up various obstacles in my own way that have left me sometimes … pretty disoriented and pretty unhappy. But I am, at my core, a happy person. And it’s okay for me to protect that by living the life I want to live.”
