Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - John Mulaney Talks to Ted Danson About “Saturday Night Live”

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Team Coco is excited to bring you a new season of “Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (Sometimes)”! In this clip, Ted sits down with the one and only John Mulaney to talk about his time on “Saturday Night Live,” John’s Netflix talk show “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” parenting, and more. To listen to the rest of John’s episode along with conversations with other guests like Sarah Silverman, Fred Armisen, Ed Helms, Andy Richter, and more, head over to “Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (Sometimes)” now! Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.

Hey, Conan here with some news that's hot off the presses. Our Team Coco podcast, where everybody knows your name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes, is back for a brand new season. This season, listen as Ted and Woody, when we can find him, have some great conversations with people like John Mulaney, Sarah Silverman, Fred Armisen, and more.

The first episode with John Mulaney is out right now. Here's a sneak peek. You came out of Saturday Night Live without PTSD, right? Yeah. Because some of your compatriots do. Some of it's hard. Oh, it's very hard, yeah. It's very competitive, yes,

to get your material up and on. It's competitive with yourself and with the gods of show business. I don't even mean the gods that run the show. I mean, the sort of larger, just is something playing or not. But I recognize I had a very good experience there. I just liked having a boss. I liked fitting into a hierarchy. I like, I kind of like what would be a good word, bizarre strong-willed people.

I get a kick out of them. I liked working with some of these guys at the show, had been there since 76 and we're 90 years old and we're just crazy and mean. I mean, really like I just got a kick. You're not offended. No, I delighted in it. Yeah, that's great. I don't want to name names, but so many of them are dead. But there were just people go, you know, I remember Phil Himes, our lighting designer,

had started on NBC radio during World War II, as did Don Pardo. And we were doing a sketch where Fred was playing Obama, and it was like a, at one point, he gets up in the Oval Office, Fred, and he looks out the window. So we kind of needed a special treatment, I thought, of lighting on the Oval Office windows so they were non-reflective or something.

And I'm explaining this to Phil Himes, and he stares at me, and he goes, I fucking lit John F. Kennedy in the White House. And I'm like 25 going, can you do this thing where the windows don't shine? Yeah. The 50th anniversary was great. I know you were.

It was really cool. Yeah, really. It was- So many new pieces too. Spectacular. I liked it. It wasn't just like clip packages, a lot of performance and stuff. Yeah. That was really good.

How long were you on that, working on that? In conversations for weeks leading up to it, but nothing got done. And then we all flew in around the Monday or Tuesday before, and then it really ramped up. But leading up to it was funny because you just knew that Lorne was, you just knew he was waiting just long enough that it got really scared. Yeah. Yeah. It was, cause we saw it coming for so many years, you had to make it disorganized in some way

so that it could all come together by the broadcast. Were people pissed off or did they like the, the scripted show about Saturday Night Live. Oh, the Jason Reitman one? Yeah. No, I didn't hear anyone was pissed off. I did get a physical though at UCLA hospital and I get all this blood work done, prostate.

They checked my liver. Everything good? Everything good. The doctor, knowing a little of my history goes, I don't know how this is possible, but you have the liver of a 12-year-old. I was thrilled. That's really what you want in your organs is 12. Yeah. Yeah, because they've lived a little life.

But they've got some more miles. Some more miles. So then we're finishing up the physical and he goes, I saw that movie Saturday night, so I have a real appreciation of what your career has been like. And I said, oh, well, you you know that movie's not that accurate and he goes I know Jason he wouldn't make stuff up and I go yeah but I'm telling you I'm telling you some of its embellished but that's okay because it's for a movie and he goes from what I'm hearing it's very accurate I go sir I don't doctor I don't want to have this conversation anymore I'm trusting you with a lot of my blood.

Okay, head over to where everybody knows your name to listen to the rest of John and Ted's conversation now. And be sure to subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.