Mike Birbiglia is a “that guy” in movies and on television. The guy we recognize because he played Brie Larson’s husband in Trainwreck, or his role on Billions, or as that guy from Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” video. Birbiglia also happens to be one of the consistently funniest comedians working right now. From his stand-up to his podcast, he’s never not funny, which has to be a bonus for his wife and daughter at home.
Birbiglia’s comedy tends to focus, as his new Netflix special Old Man and the Pool does, on the everyday questions of life. Especially now that the 45-year-old dad of one is hitting middle age. Questions like, for instance, “Why are we here? What’s next? What happens when the items at the doctor’s office that you thought were decorative become functional?” Old Man and the Pool has been a massive hit on Broadway, as Birbiglia honestly addresses mortality and aging and relationships. All of which are based on his own experiences as a husband and a dad. Here’s what else you need to know about Birbiglia’s family.
Birbiglia awkwardly said “I love you” on his first date with his future wife.
In his 2013 stand-up special My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, Birbiglia recounted his first date with his future wife, poet Jen Stein, who, as fans of his comedy know, he’s referred to as Clo. “We’re out to dinner and she says to me, ‘Everyone hates me at work.’ And I said, ‘Why would anyone hate you? I love you.’” Yup, on the first date, which might have been enough to intimidate someone else, but apparently it didn’t scare Stein off. Because the two were eventually married.
They got married at City Hall in 2008.
The couple clearly came back from that awkward first date. The little astronauts poet and comedian tied the knot at New York City Hall in 2008.
He had seven specific reasons for not wanting to be a dad.
In Birbiglia’s 2018 Broadway show, The New One, he broke down a list of reasons for why he never wanted to have a child. First off, “I’ve lost a lot of great friends to kids,” which he called “a disease, but they want you to have it too.” He also loved his “beloved couch,” and his cat and his marriage. He eventually wrote a book called The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad about his ambivalence at having a child.
“Logically, I felt so correct about all of my reasoning,” he told NPR in 2020. “Maybe underneath all of that was a fear that I wouldn’t be a good dad.”
He’s been open about their infertility struggles.
Before becoming parents, Stein and Birbiglia tried to conceive for eight months to no avail. The comedian opened up about this time in The New One, saying he thought of his body as a “lemon” when discovering his “boys didn’t swim.” He recalled thinking of his sperm in his 20s as “plutonium” only to discover it was more like “flat soda.” Fortunately, the flat soda eventually worked.
He got parenting advice from President Barack Obama.
The first person Birbiglia told that he and his wife were expecting their baby was then-President Barack Obama. In 2015, he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that he and his wife were in line to get a photo with the president, and decided to tell him they were expecting. Obama’s reaction? “He looks at Jen,” Birbiglia recounted, “and goes, ‘Am I the first to know?’” When she confirmed that he was, she asked for parenting advice from the dad of two. He told them to get some sleep, of course, and then added, “When you get home, the poo doesn’t smell right away. It doesn’t smell like adult poo. Adult poo smells terrible.” He went on to add that nursing can be “wonky,” so basically he was writing a parenting book on the spot for the couple.
Their daughter Oona was born in 2015.
After discussing the possibility for months, Birbiglia and Stein decided to have a baby together. And after a difficult pregnancy, they welcomed daughter Oona in 2015. But it took the new dad a long time to bond with his little girl. Something he wrote about in The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad, which he wrote as a letter to his daughter.
“This book is for [her],” he told NPR. “I’m being painfully and darkly honest in a way that I think that we should all be to each other, because I think that when you’re honest with people who you love — ultimately, even if it’s painful in the short term and the long term — it makes you even closer.”
With time, of course, Birbiglia found his groove as a dad. “I’m so present in [Oona’s] life now, that I don’t think that she could imagine there was a time where I didn’t feel connected,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2019.
Frozen is a “big problem” in his house.
During a 2019 appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden, alongside Evan Rachel Wood who stars as Anna and Elsa’s mother Queen Iduna, in Frozen 2, Birbiglia “voiced some concerns” he has with the Disney franchise. “‘[Frozen] is a big problem [in our house] actually,” he said. “The first one was dramatic because the premise, the first scene, the girl touches the other girl, the girl freezes. How do you explain that to a 4-year-old? ‘Oh yeah, she froze her and don’t do that. Like try not to freeze your friends.’”
Birbiglia thinks “parenting is like hiking.”
How does he feel about parenting now that Oona is getting older? Birbiglia thinks “parenting is like hiking.” As he put it in a comedy set, “No one is ever like, ‘Great job hiking!’ They’re just like ‘Keep hiking!’”
And yes, that pretty much sums it up.
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