Mr. Mulaney has earned a reputation as a comic’s comic, a choirboy type who makes the sort of embittered observations you’d expect from a much older, more cynical man. He’s a gifted wordsmith (“I do like to slip in precise turns of phrase,” he said, slipping in a precise turn of phrase), excels at playing characters in his routines and has become physically adept enough to make full use of Radio City’s massive stage. “It’s such a beautiful venue that it’s strangely intimate,” he said, exuding thoughtful affability while eating a late-morning bowl of oatmeal at a TriBeCa hotel restaurant last week. “I thought, ‘This is doable.’”

Of course, he embarked on his 2014 sitcom, in which he played a comedy writer named John Mulaney, with equal confidence, only to be brought down by anemic ratings and withering reviews. “Think it’s easy to clone ‘Seinfeld’?” Matt Roush asked in TV Guide Magazine. “Fox’s dreadful, embarrassing misfire ‘Mulaney’ proves otherwise.”

Mr. Mulaney put the blame on himself. “It was my baby,” he said. “I thought it was a very funny show, but I didn’t wrap the package and tie the bow in a way that people enjoyed it all.” (Some of the sitcom’s bits, like one about how “‘Ocean’s Eleven’ with women wouldn’t work,” haven’t aged well, especially considering the forthcoming release of the female heist flick “Ocean’s 8.”)

Still, he admitted, there were creative changes made when the show moved to Fox from its original home, NBC, that made it less personal, and in the process, less fulfilling. For example, in NBC’s version, Mr. Mulaney’s character had gotten sober at a young age, just as the comedian did in real life, but that got lost in the transition to Fox.

“I did not have self-discipline — one was not enough,” he said of his own wild-child days. “One day when I was 23, I thought, ‘If this were a movie, I would not be rooting for this guy anymore.’ It sounds weird, but that flipped me.”