With Evan Mulrooney, you get a man who can do both — viral social media content creation and more traditional Hollywood productions, that is.
The comedian has popped up everywhere over the last year from “Only Murders in the Building” to “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” in addition to churning out his own scripted bits and sketches online.
“It was a DM on TikTok from one of Ru’s producers/right-hand men, and I admittedly kind of thought it was spam. I’m not, like, huge on TikTok, but he courted me; I would be a fool not to respond to a stranger’s DMs on social media, so I hopped at the opportunity and got on a phone call,” he told TheWrap of joining the reality show as a guest judge. “Ru had seen me online and found out about me that way. I was under the impression that I was going to come on and help in a challenge, so to speak, not necessarily judge.”
And he clearly made a good impression, because they then brought him back as an honorary Pit Crew member for the Season 11 finale… wearing only a pair of gold briefs.
“Thank God I’m comfortable in my own skin. I just had dinner with a friend recently, and she was like, ‘That was crazy. You were just mostly nude for a full episode of television.’ It’s taken me a long time to get there, and I still most of the time sigh at myself for some misgiving I have about the curvature of my bicep or the thickness of my hamstrings or abs, as any young, healthy man would do in America,” he continued. “But it is still a surprising thing, when Ru calls your number to do a video or two, as we’ve all been there. Just being around him and that whole environment was awe-inspiring and I’m still dumbstruck as to the whole experience.”
Of course, this wasn’t Mulrooney’s first time on set. Prior to making a name for himself on Instagram, he already had roles on series such as “Justified: City Primeval,” “Dexter: Resurrection” and “Fargo.”
“Those were television shows I did well before I had any relevancy on social media, and I got into making videos at probably the worst time in the history of social media to start. Like, right after things started opening up after the pandemic, and I said, ‘Let me get in here,’” he recalled. “It was a matter of keeping myself fresh and creating things of my own, and it was really a way of keeping myself accountable for being on camera and feeling comfortable and getting all this stupidity in my head outside of my head for others to laugh at – or laugh with, I’m not partial to which way they want to do it.”
“I think there is a large cohort of people that are huge on social media who haven’t quite hit it big in the traditional sense and are trying to do it with that very intention, i.e. myself,” Mulrooney added. “Especially as someone who has a lot of interest in comedy and considers themselves a bastardized sense of the word comedian, a tired improviser. But it’s wonderful to have this portfolio of a body of work to point to. I started in stand-up, I have experience in that, but what is nice is that if you want to see what I do or understand that I look the way I do and I have my own voice, then here’s my thing.”
So how does his social media status influence his co-stars’ perception of him on these Hollywood productions, considering nowadays “one single video online could have more views than a television show’s entire season.”
“There is some recognition when I go on sets. People are so kind in person; people are very mean online sometimes, but for the most part, people are very nice,” he said. “There’s a sense of familiarity and some sense of kinship with me because they ingest my musings when they’re usually in the bathroom or tired and hungover on the train or whatever. It’s becoming so part of the zeitgeist and so part of the industry that it’s not as stigmatized. It’s more of a good thing than it is a proverbial curse to be labeled as such. I feel like a comedic actor/comedian who makes videos and puts myself out that way.”
“It’s a cool thing (and also kind of a bummer thing) about traditional celebrities who we grew up with who are now making a huge effort to stay relevant on Instagram. And it’s also easy to tell who’s doing it for the pure fun of it,” he noted. “Someone like Ru — just the comedic instincts and sensibilities and timing — it’s so apparent that he grew up watching Carol Channing and Mary Tyler Moore and probably ‘SCTV’ and all that. You also see someone like Kyle MacLachlan: ‘Twin Peaks,’ David Fincher’s muse, and it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s a goofy son of a bitch.’ I want to watch that all day long. It’s cool that everyone can get a piece of the pie.”
Naturally, that dichotomy of classifications extends to other parts of his life as well, thanks in part to the hyper-sexualized character he’s created for himself.
“I struggle with labels. Labels have really f–ked me up. The nuance that I live in within being a bisexual man and that label, and then also this label of content creation. There’s always some heat with whatever label: I’m less of a comedian, less of an actor because I’m a content creator. I’m going to be taken less seriously than someone who’s perhaps been in the game for the same time as me but has had different opportunities,” he shared. “But there are also people who are content creators who you look at their body of work and it’s the lane that they want to stay in. And there’s a ton to develop. There’s so many studios that are starting creator wings for these 10-minute vertical series. It’s the Wild West in that regard, but also in the sense of the railroad tycoons kind of monopolizing everything.”
Most recently, Mulrooney parlayed his “Drag Race” guest judging stint into a role in “Stop! That! Train!” as well as a podcast appearance on Season 5 of Grindr’s “Who’s the A**hole?” with Katya Zamolodchikova.
“What’s fun about life is being incredibly vulnerable and then also laughing at it immediately. I really can’t take things that serious – it has caused me the most strife and the most pain and the most torment, and I will continue to do that, I’m sure, just based on my own human nature. But I am never offended when we laugh at anything,” he further shared. “I think that was my biggest complaint in the locker room when I played college football: ‘Can you take anything serious?’ I got that from multiple teammates, multiple coaches, even training staff. And the overwhelming majority of the time, I would have to say, ‘Absolutely not.’ What’s the point?”
“Also, you’ve got to know your audience, in terms of going into vulnerability and laughing at it. The benefit of being hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of everything is that I know my surroundings to a painful degree a lot of the time,” Mulrooney concluded. “Shout-out to Grindr and the whole editing team. They did a f–king marvelous job. Everyone was behind me and I felt taken care of.”
