by In my recent interview with rising comedian John Mulaney, we also got to talk about the TV writing he has done already in the past year (before starting work this week on the writing staff of SNL).
Mulaney spent more than a bit of his summer writing for the upcoming Comedy Central sketch and variety show, Important Things with Demetri Martin, still tentatively slated for an October debut. The writing staff there included head writer Michael Koman (previously on staff at Conan), Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, and of course, Martin himself. "It was great. I was working with some of the funniest people I’ve ever met," Mulaney said of that experience. "The bar was set high. It was challenging. You wanted to make people like Jon Benjamin laugh. It feels good when you do."
That wasn’t Mulaney’s first TV writing credit, either. "I had done a couple of small projects, and I’d written a pilot for Comedy Central with Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter before." No, not the show the network greenlighted this summer, but a previous pilot project from last year.
Though still relatively young as both a stand-up and a writer, Mulaney offered this perspective on his recent experience with Martin’s show versus writing for himself. "It wasn’t easy or hard. You could be more comfortable because you’re working with other people, sitting around with people you trust," he said. "That was great to be writing for someone like Demetri who is really open to a lot of different ideas…and is extremely hilarious."
Now Mulaney has an even bigger pool of talent to work with at NBC’s legendary Saturday Night Live.
