Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney may be just as much of a surprise for its viewers as it was for Netflix.
In a piece about the new weekly late-night show published by Vulture on Wednesday (March 19), host John Mulaney recalled the “funniest phone call” he has with the streaming giant once they caught word of Episode 1 would feature Fred Armisen and Joan Baez as guests, with the company expressing concern as to whether or not they had landed guests who would make the show’s debut exciting.
“‘This is not the show we sold,'” he recounted being told by a Netflix executive, before telling Vulture, “It was great to see someone kind of apoplectic — like, Oh honey, do you know what you bought? And then they go, ‘We don’t even understand what this rundown means!’ I’m like, Yeah, you think you’ll feel better when I explain ‘telescope murder’? If I walk you through that it’s a Body Double parody, you’ll feel better about the spend?”
The first episode, which aired live on Netflix last Wednesday night (March 12), also welcomed his announcer Richard Kind, and guests Michael Keaton, personal finance columnist Jessica Roy and Tracy Morgan playing King Latifah.
The show snuck its way into Netflix’s Top 10 Shows in the U.S. this week, anchoring the list at No. 10, and has scored rave reviews, including from DECIDER contributor Sean L. McCarthy, who writes that the show “feels like an enormous space for a talk show. But it’s also large enough of a space for some big ideas, and big swings that are sorely needed in the talk show genre.”
As for the show’s intended unevenness, Mulaney told Vulture,” I can protect myself by acting like we just think it’s weird, and that way you can’t criticize it in the same way.
“Whether something’s good or people like it is so ephemeral. If they could possibly predict it with data, they’d have more hits,” he added. “I don’t mean Netflix. I mean everybody.”
Nonetheless, in the midst of several other projects Mulaney himself acknowledged that they are “not looking to stay on for 30 years.”
The first two episodes of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney are now streaming on Netflix.