Sir Mick Jagger has admitted he is “disassociated” from real life after John Mulaney said he was not “nice” when they worked together.
Sir Mick Jagger has admitted he is “disassociated” from real life.
The 82-year-old Rolling Stones rocker was asked about comedian John Mulaney’s 2019 special where he said Jagger was not “nice” when they worked together on Saturday Night Live and Jagger admitted fame has changed how he reacts to other people.
While Jagger insisted he has not seen the special, he told the New York Times: “Obviously it’s not normal. It’s not like most people’s lives. It does affect you. You become disassociated. From other people.
“A lot of people in show business only hang around with people in show business, because they’ve got something in common, they can relate to each other, and you get disassociated from what people might call ‘real life’.”
In his 2019 Kid Gorgeous at Radio City comedy special, Mulaney, 43, spoke about pitching SNL sketches to Jagger, who is a close friend of producer Lorne Michaels
He said: “My friends were all like, ‘Is he nice?’ No. Or maybe he is, for his version of life because he has a very different life. He’s played to stadiums of 20,000 people cheering for him like he’s a god for 50 years. That must change you as a person.
“If you do that for 50 years, you’re never again gonna be like, ‘Um, does anyone have a laptop charger I could borrow?’ You know that b******* way we all have to talk to get through life?”
While Mick Jagger admitted his fame has affected him, he insisted he actively tries to “fight against it”.
He said: “I mean, you do fight against it. It’s a conscious effort. It’s quite easy, really. You go out and walk on the street on your own and do normal things, go and buy The New York Times. But, nevertheless, that’s only temporary because psychologically your actual state of mind is permanently damaged.
“Your late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because it’s a big ego trip, and you have to have a huge ego to do this. People that do this that don’t have huge egos have huge problems because they have to manufacture a completely different [personality]. I have a friend whose standing joke is that I behave at a dinner party like I behave onstage.”
However, Mick has tried to tone down his persona when he is off stage.
He said: “It’s absurd what you do onstage. Of course I’m not really like my stage persona… it’s such an exaggerated version of me… And there are people in show business that never switch off. A lot of them are comedians, and sometimes they can’t stop making jokes or they get depressed. That’s a bit of a sweeping statement.
“I think it comes with age. You’ve heard all these stories about method actors. They take it to the absolute extreme, so they’re like the character all the time, and then after the movie’s over, they’re still in character. It takes a long time to slough off the character. So which character do you go back to? Is he always going to carry some of that character in his ‘true’ character, whatever that is?
“This is the show business dichotomy and it’s something you learn to live with, and you always hope that you’re a so-called normal person underneath.”
Sir Mick Jagger responds to John Mulaney calling him not ‘nice’
