John Mulaney and Stephen Colbert Meet For The First Time (Again)

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John Mulaney was a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night. It may have been a case of paying back a favor because Stephen Colbert was recently a surprise guest in Mulaney and Nick Kroll’s Broadway smash show, Oh, Hello. Colbert thought his walk-on cameo in Oh, Hello was the first time he had met John Mulaney. It was not. That actually happened nearly 17 years earlier when Mulaney was a college student at Georgetown University in DC.

Colbert didn’t remember meeting Mulaney back in 2000. That could be because in 2000, Stephen Colbert was a big time correspondent with Comedy Central’s Daily Show, working with relatively new host, Jon Stewart. And at the time, Mulaney, according to himself, was “a little freckle-faced puffy little hung-over monster”. But he was also a huge Stephen Colbert fan from his work on the Daily Show and before that, Strangers with Candy. The two had passed each other on campus after Colbert was done with a Daily Show shoot and Mulaney wanted nothing more than to greet one of his comedy heroes with a sincere and intelligent salutation. But all he was able to blurt out was a “Hey!” followed by a sort of gurgling groaning noise. You really can’t blame Stephen Colbert for not writing that one down in his diary.

Colbert and Mulaney had more in common than just running into each other at Georgetown U. They both grew up Catholic and they each spent time as altar boys. It was a job that John Mulaney compared to being Farnsworth Bentley, the butler and umbrella wrangler for P. Diddy. In the Late Show interview that you can watch below, you can see Colbert and Mulaney swap tales of their altar boy adventures, plus hear why John Mulaney longed to be Jewish and find out if he is still Catholic to this day. Well, sort of, there’s a long pause after that question.

You can see John Mulaney as George St. Geegland along with Nick Kroll as Gil Faizon in Oh, Hello which has extended its run on Broadway until January 22nd. For tickets, go to ohhellobroadway.com

As a bonus, after you watch John Mulaney’s Late Show interview, you can see Stephen Colbert’s appearance in Oh, Hello below as well.

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