John Mulaney thought he was having dinner with a friend. Then 12 comedians staged an intervention.

John Mulaney was two hours late for his own intervention.

First, he had to stop at his drug dealer's apartment. Then to 30 Rockefeller Centre, the famous home of Saturday Night Live, where he requested a hair cut.

No, you cannot usually do that. As Mulaney puts it in his new Netflix comedy special Baby J, SNL is an Emmy-award winning TV series, not a "all-night pop-in barbershop".

But, faced with a former employee "coked out of [his] mind", the hair department obliged.

Watch: the trailer for John Mulaney's stand-up special Baby J. Post continues below video.

It was December 18, 2020. Most of us had spent the year inside, living through lockdowns and quarantine measures. Those days were big for pyjamas. And beards. And just generally, not looking particularly polished. So, what a time for a fresh haircut.

Mulaney, 40, then travelled to the place he was actually meant to be that night – a college friend's house, for dinner. Or so he thought. It was actually the location of his intervention, where a dozen comics had gathered in-person and on Zoom to confront him about his drug addiction.

He knew what it was as soon as he opened the door.

"Do you know how bad of a drug problem you have to have if, when you open a door and see people gathered, your first and immediate thought is, 'This is probably an intervention about my drug problem?'" he joked.

Early in his career, Mulaney spoke about getting sober in his 20s. In a 2014 interview, he stated he had been sober since 2005. In was only after the news of him attending rehab for drug addiction got out that the world learned he had harboured a secret cocaine and prescription-pill addiction.

He first attended rehab in September 2020. After leaving, he hosted SNL's Halloween special and relapsed. Less than two months later, his friends intervened.

Among the group were Seth Meyers, Nick Kroll, Fred Armisen, Natasha Lyonne and Bill Hader.

"Look. Let me just call this out now. I don't mean to be weird. It was a star-studded intervention. It was, like, a good group," Mulaney joked during Baby J.

He described it as "a We Are the World of alternative comedians over the age of 40".

But, despite their occupations, the situation was short on jokes.

"No one said a funny thing the entire night... I was going psychotic. I am sitting there in an awful chair, crashing from cocaine. No one will let me go to the bathroom to 'freshen up', and the funniest people in the world are staring at me, refusing to do jokes. It was maddening.

"Fred Armisen was serious. Do you know how off-putting that is?"

Mulaney said he was furious with his friends at the time.

"I was so mad that night. They had tricked me. I mean, at its core, an intervention is a prank. They had pranked me. They were trying to tell me what to do with my life, they were trying to control me. They were sending me away to rehab for months. I felt powerless. I felt very angry."

He felt differently now.

"Getting to do this show, and standing here, listen, I am grateful to everyone at my intervention. They intervened, they confronted me, and they totally saved my life," he said, joking that his friends were "well aware" they'd done a good thing and regularly brought it up.

Image: NBC.

Mulaney spent two months in rehab from December 2020 until February 2021.

The comedy special is the first time Mulaney has gone into great detail about this time in his life, but he had previously appeared on the Late Night With Seth Meyers show, where he thanked Meyers for taking part, as well as helping him after he left rehab, with a temporary job writing for the show.

When he referred to knowing straight away that he was walking into an intervention, Mulaney said he tried to 'scoop' his friends by acknowledging he had a drug problem and needed help before they had a chance to say their piece. He also said he claimed to be sober during the discussion, but regularly went to the bathroom to use cocaine.

"I was so mad. At that point in time, I wanted to continue using drugs. Sitting here tonight, I'm so grateful to you and to everyone there for saving my life. That night, I was not grateful," he said.

Baby J is now streaming on Netflix.

Feature image: Netflix.