How John Mulaney and Nick Kroll found their “Too Much Tuna” guests for “Oh Hello, On Broadway”

John Mulaney and Nick Kroll’s run of Oh Hello, On Broadway, now filmed for Netflix, was a triumphant two-man tour-de-farce.

Not only was their Broadway production packed with jokes, but in the middle of their massive joke sandwich, the characters of Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland inserted about 10 minutes of a show within the show, a prank segment called Too Much Tuna, improvised each night with a different special guest.

Fans of Kroll Show, of course, remember Too Much Tuna as a segment there, too.

At the end of the Netflix credits, three full and separate pages praise all of the different celebrities who came up from their seat in the audience to participate in Too Much Tuna.

How did Mulaney and Kroll pull Steve Martin for their Netflix taping? As they told me yesterday…

Mulaney: “The day before Steve Martin did it – we’d asked him, and he was working on his own show in Connecticut at that time, so he couldn’t do it for a long time – he emailed being like, ‘I never got back to you. Are there any open dates?’ We were like, ‘Tomorrow! But it’s on film. Is that OK by you?’ Then we were so lucky that Michael J. Fox, who was booked on a different date, agreed to do one of the tapings. Those two guys would just be the most funny and beloved and amazing onstage.”

Kroll: “They were both great.”

Mulaney: “So it worked out perfectly.”

Kroll: “You look at Steve Martin, who truly, obviously for both of us. The first time I met him he said he had seen a little bit of Kroll Show before, and very nicely was like, ‘Your show was great. You know, I used to do a little bit of sketch.’ And you’re like, this is bananas! But also, he’s a playwright, a really esteemed playwright, so it was crazy.”

Mulaney: “He’s big stadium comedy, and high art, all at once. And George and Gil are neither but believe themselves to be both.”

That made more sense than Alan Alda or Steely Dan, the two specifically mentioned icons referenced onstage by Gil and George?

Mulaney: “We tried a lot of things, and then we lucked out…We had Letterman already booked for the last night, but we couldn’t move him.”

Kroll: “Because every night was a different guest, whatever the experience was, whether it was a big, famous actor, or Itzhak Perlman like a violinist, or the occasional time we’d pull someone out of the crowd and talk to a 13-year-old kid.”

Mulaney: “Which I, more out of feeling bad we hadn’t booked it, I was like, why don’t we just pull someone out of the crowd? Why does it have to be a celebrity? I took the opposite tack, out of defensiveness. How come you’re all obsessed with celebrity? We could have anyone do it!”

Kroll: “We had Bernie Frank do it.”

Mulaney: “I was holding out hope that Bernie Sanders was going to do it. I kept thinking, we haven’t heard back yet.”

Here, though, is everyone who did do Too Much Tuna with the dynamic duo, as credited on Netflix.

“All The Guests Who Were Pranked With Tuna And Lived To Tell The Tale, Including Geraldo Rivera”

  • Anson Mount
  • Rachel Bloom
  • Andy Richter
  • Tina Fey
  • Anthony Atamanuik as Trump
  • Alex Guarnaschelli
  • Geraldo Rivera
  • Samira Wiley
  • Edie Falco
  • Seth Rogen
  • Murray Abraham
  • David Byrne
  • Jason Sudeikis
  • Mike Birbiglia
  • Aya Cash
  • Ilana Glazer
  • Martin Short
  • Alia Shawkat
  • Adam Pally
  • Ralph Macchio
  • Max Greenfield
  • Bob Harper
  • Jason Mantzoukas
  • Apatow family
  • Gina Rodriguez
  • Itzhak Perlman
  • Fred Armisen
  • Tovah Feldshuh
  • Ben Stiller
  • Busy Philipps
  • Adam Driver
  • Chelsea Handler
  • Pat Kiernan
  • Amy Sedaris
  • Jerry Seinfeld
  • Chris Pratt
  • Julie White
  • Gina Gershon
  • Dakota Fanning
  • Jerrod Carmichael
  • Matthew Broderick
  • Ira Glass
  • Will Forte
  • Robin Byrd
  • Laura Benanti
  • Katie Couric
  • Michael Riedel
  • Griffin Dunne
  • Bobby Cannavale
  • Natasha Lyonne
  • Mo Rocca
  • Ad Rock
  • Fred Savage
  • Seth Meyers
  • Paul Sorvino
  • Rebel Wilson
  • Aubrey Plaza
  • Josh Groban
  • Aziz Ansari
  • Shoukath Ansari
  • Alan Alda
  • Willie Geist
  • Alex Brightman
  • Cara Delevingne
  • David Harbour
  • Gaten Matarazzo
  • Ben Platt
  • Jesse Eisenberg
  • Will Ferrell
  • John Oliver
  • Whoopi Goldberg
  • Paul Shaffer
  • Jason Alexander
  • Andrea Martin
  • Robin Taylor
  • Tavi Gevinson
  • Andy Cohen
  • Bob the Drag Queen
  • Cuba Gooding Jr.
  • Stephen Colbert
  • Adrienne Moore
  • Julie Klausner
  • Andrew Rannells
  • Zoe Lister-Jones
  • Conan O’Brien
  • Alan Alda
  • Jim Gaffigan
  • Henry Winkler
  • Richard Kind
  • Fisher Stevens
  • Larry Wilmore
  • Taylor Schilling
  • Annaleigh Ashford
  • Joe Lo Truglio
  • Olivia Wilde
  • Rob Corddry
  • Jessica Walter
  • Amy Schumer
  • Jake Lacy
  • Sebastian Stan
  • Bobby Moynihan
  • David Remnick
  • America Ferrera
  • Norman Lear
  • Kristen Wiig
  • Hank Azaria
  • Tony Danza
  • Leslie Jones
  • Rachel Dratch
  • Steve Pasquale
  • Kathy Najimy
  • John Hodgman
  • Austin Pendleton
  • Paul Rudd
  • Thomas Middleditch
  • Kelli O’Hara
  • Hannibal Buress
  • Billy Eichner
  • Josh Charles
  • Pete Davidson
  • Reggie Watts
  • Barney Frank
  • Alan Cumming
  • Steve Martin
  • Michael J. Fox
  • Kathleen Turner
  • James L. Brooks
  • J. Miller
  • David Letterman

 

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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