Comedian nick Kroll has opened up about the intense pressure he felt while helping to orchestrate an intervention for his close friend and colleague, John mulaney. Kroll described the experience as deeply frightening, recalling his fears for Mulaney’s life during that period.

Speaking on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Kroll detailed the difficulties of organizing the intervention for Mulaney in late 2020. The intervention occurred while the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, and Kroll was in Los Angeles while Mulaney was in New York city. kroll was also dealing with his wife’s pregnancy and working on the set of Don’t Worry Darling.

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

“John was running around New York City like a true madman, and I was so deeply scared that he was going to die.”

Kroll also explained that coordinating logistics, such as finding an immediate rehab facility for Mulaney, added to the stress.He noted that Mulaney’s behavior in the time leading up to the intervention gained new meaning as he understood the depths of Mulaney’s struggles.

“All of a sudden,you’re going back,being like,’Oh,oh,oh – that’s why I’ve had an inconsistent friend for the last X amount of time. Oh, this explains that,'” Kroll said. “So, it gives you both empathy for them, and also a tremendous amount of anger because they’ve been lying.”

Kroll recounted a particularly emotional phone call with Mulaney before the intervention: “I have a very clear memory of being outside, sitting on the ground, on the phone with him, both of us crying, me just being like, ‘I’m just so scared you’re going to die.’ And I felt him feeling the same way, but also like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah – but anyway, I’m in this new AirBnb, I gotta go!'”

Mulaney later incorporated the intervention into his stand-up routines, including his 2023 Netflix special, Baby J. Kroll initially felt uneasy about this,partly because Mulaney was “still pretty fucking pissed about the intervention” after rehab,and because he wasn’t sure he liked being joked about after working so hard to save his friend.

The two friends eventually discussed the material, with Kroll acknowledging that Mulaney’s comedic strength comes from sharing personal struggles. Kroll stated that what makes Mulaney so “fucking funny and dynamic and intoxicating as a performer is that he’s giving you a written version of life, he’s giving you access to elements of himself.”

Mulaney, for his part, said in Baby J: “I am grateful to everyone at my intervention. They confronted me,and they totally saved my life.”