John Mulaney's Ex Anna Marie Tendler Details Her 2-Week Stay at Psychiatric Hospital
Content warning: This story contains mentions of suicide and self-harm.
Anna Marie Tendler is sharing her truth.
Three years after the multimedia artist split from her husband of six years, John Mulaney, she’s detailing her mental health journey—including her two-week stay at a psychiatric hospital and her struggles with “intense suicidal ideation, self-harm, disordered eating”—in her Aug. 13 memoir Men Have Called Her Crazy.
“I have entered the hospital on the recommendation of my therapist,” Tendler wrote in her novel, per an excerpt published by Elle July 23. “She felt we had come to an ‘impasse’ (her words), where she was at a loss for what to do with me (my words). I arranged ahead of time to stay in the women-only house because I absolutely refuse to be around men.”
She recalled telling her therapist, referring to men, “I don’t even want to look at them.”
While the 39-year-old’s therapist informed her that her medical team would primarily be men, she let staff know of her distrust.
Tendler—who was admitted at the beginning of 2021 while her then-husband Mulaney was in rehab for his alcohol and cocaine addiction—reflected on her conversation with a psychiatrist during her evaluation and the questions he asked.
“Within 10 minutes, I’m being asked to recount past physical and sexual abuse,” she noted. “I feel these should be Day 3 questions. However, it is often easier to tell these things to strangers, so I do.”
Tendler also shared she had previously written a suicide note but didn’t plan on taking her own life and, instead, self-harmed. As she put it in her memoir, “I wanted to die, but I cut myself instead, and that cutting wasn’t meant to kill me.”
And she couldn’t help but think about the note she had written, which she ultimately felt embarrassed by.
“There was one particularly mortifying part about wearing a very sexy dress to a party and receiving no compliments about how hot I looked,” she shared in the memoir. “The note was filled with venom and rage. I was so blinded by anger, I was ready to end it all over something as trivial as a leopard-print Norma Kamali dress.”
She admitted, “Underneath the vanity was a deep depression, a seemingly bottomless chasm of worthlessness and anxiety.”
But her self-admitted stay was a step in the right direction for Tendler, who had hopes of getting better amid a dark time in her life.
She told a nurse, “My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.”
And five months later, Tendler and Mulaney confirmed their breakup. The Big Mouth actor is now married to Olivia Munn, with whom he shares son Malcolm, 2.
The Pin It! author announced her memoir in March and said on her Instagram that she had “never been more proud of any work.”
“It is a story about mental health; about being a woman; about family,” she continued. “And finally, about the endless source of my heartbreak and rage—men."
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For more revelations from Anna Marie Tendler, read her memoir.
If you or someone you know needs help, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.