It’s probably the most asked question by his fans if you’ve seen him perform throughout his comedy career. “What happened to John Mulaney‘s Face?” is a question that haunts social media in the past year and a half.
Fans of the former SNL writer noticed that John Mulaney’s chin and face got wider. “The jaw is giving Zac Efron. John, hello???” one fan posted on TikTok. “Since when did John Mulaney’s jaw and chin get so huge,” another fan posted on X. And according to Vulture, one Instagram commenter wrote, “Why does John Mulaney look like he auditioned for Wolverine or something?”
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What happened to John Mulaney’s chin?
Though there’s been so much speculation about John Mulaney’s face changes, he has never addressed chin implant or plastic surgery rumors. According to an interview with GQ, sobriety helped his face show his features more, or in their case, “an unexpected superhero jaw.”
“There was a time when I would have told you that I could not fly, sleep, or perform unless I had a Klonopin,” he told the outlet about his addiction during the pandemic. “I thought I had serious light sensitivity onstage. Spotlights had to be at a super-low grade. The front row had to be lit, because I thought I had a spatial…not vertigo, but something like that. I would have said, ‘It sucks, because I don’t always want to take Klonopin and Xanax, but I have to.’ ”
He also is confident in growing up after his viral standup Netflix specials New in Town and The Comeback Kid. “I can be really set in my ways, in some ways,” Mulaney says. “But I am very good at major transformations.”
Mulaney has often been very open about his struggles with addiction in his stand up sets. After an intervention led by his A-lister friends, he went to rehab in 2021. He reiterated the hardships in his recovery in an interview with David Letterman. “Getting off those can be very rough. I was in the detox hospital room and I was grinding my teeth so much that a molar cracked.”
As for what he’s really addressed about his chin, he told Rolling Stone about the life rules he’ll always follow. “Don’t eat crackers or anything like that in bed,” he said. “Even if you keep the plate right under your chin, they end up at your feet.”