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John Mulaney Wanted Jake Gyllenhaal for The Sack Lunch Bunch Because ‘That Guy Is Nuts!’

You see him here, you see him there, Mr. Music’s everywhere, at least in GIF form since the release of The Sack Lunch Bunch. That’s the Netflix children’s special where John Mulaney somehow got Jake Gyllenhaal to play a bananas music instructor who can’t actually produce any good sounds. As Mulaney explained on Late Night, it’s actually just as easy as it sounds to get Gyllenhaal to go kooky, since he and the team behind Sack Lunch Bunch decided to reach out to the movie star after realizing they couldn’t get their first choice for the song (“Harry Belafonte in 1961”) and deciding to settle for the guy who gave that wild performance in Okja. “Honestly, Mr. Gyllenhaal, we want you to make any choice that you want,” Mulaney remembers saying. “He knew that meant ‘go real big.’”

John Mulaney on How He Got Jake Gyllenhaal for Sack Lunch