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For my money’s worth, John Mulaney is the funniest stand-up comedian working today.
Once you can get past the fact that he sounds like one of those old-timey news anchors that could be heard on radios across America in the 1920s, you realize that Mulaney is able to tell both straight-up punchline jokes and long, elaborate story jokes.
Those two skills, as it turns out, make Mulaney perhaps the perfect award show host, as the 41-year-old recently crushed his gig as host of the Governor Awards.
Two of Mulaney’s jokes that went particularly viral involved him reading a letter that he got from his agents and taking a shot at Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
“Here’s what a great actor Angela Bassett is: she got an Oscar nomination for a Marvel movie. That’s like getting a Pulitzer Prize for a Reddit comment,” Mulaney joked before the camera cuts to a cackling Robert Downey Jr.
It’s certainly been a busy year for Mulaney, as he appeared in episodes of both Bupkis and The Bear, while also releasing a new Netflix standup special titled John Mulaney: Baby J. He also reprised his role as Peter Porker / Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He’s also currently raising his young son Malcolm, who he and his partner Olivia Munn gave birth to back in 2021.
This year’s Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, March 10 in Los Angeles and will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, who previously hosted the show in 2023, 2018, and 2017.
You can find a full video of Mulaney’s opening monologue at the Governor Awards below.