He was the meticulously tailored former altar boy who built an empire on being the smartest, safest, most put-together guy in the room. Then that same man was secretly buying cocaine in the middle of the night, consumed by addiction. This is the staggering contradiction of John Mulaney and the crushing burden of maintaining a perfect public image.

This deep dive examines the architecture of the persona Mulaney constructed, the mechanics of how it collapsed, and the brutally honest foundation he built in its place. From studying Johnny Carson tapes as a Chicago kid to becoming an SNL prodigy, from a catastrophic sitcom failure to the star-studded intervention that saved his life, his arc culminates in a historic Wrigley Field headline and his raw special Baby J.

• How a high-achieving lawyer household and Catholic upbringing shaped  ...