Saturday Night Live is in the middle of celebrating a milestone season, and as celebrities like Dave Chappelle and Timothée Chalamet forge ahead as the Season 50 hosts and musical guests appearing on the 2025 TV schedule, it’s also been a good time to look back. SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night explores aspects of NBC’s long-running sketch comedy show from the perspective of current and former writers, cast and crew, and Bowen Yang opened up about his unique experience as the first full-time Asian-American cast member and one of few identifying as queer.
Part of the SNL50 docuseries (available to stream with a Peacock subscription) dives into the audition process — a necessary evil for hopeful cast members and one that’s so nerve-wracking that Andy Samberg said he threw up at his. Pete Davidson and others got real about how the producers famously don’t laugh during the auditions, and while that sounds like a horrible scenario for a comedian to be in, Bowen Yang seemed to find the whole SNL process freeing, as he shared in the documentary:
I think that’s the right thing to come in here with is just to feel some, like, liberated sense of ‘This is who I am. Take it or leave it, like, literally take it or leave it.’ My point of view will be maybe, like, that of an Asian person or that of a queer person, but also there are just as many things outside of that that have nothing to do with those things.
Bowen Yang’s brand of comedy has produced some amazing moments, including the iconic Titanic iceberg sketch, but he admitted there have been times since going from a writer to a cast member in 2019 that some leaned too hard on just his Asian ethnicity and/or queerness. It’s something he’s apparently spoken out about, too, as he continued:
There would be conversations I would have with writers who I felt like were maybe pigeonholing certain things about me, and thankfully that was never met with any toxicity or pushback. It was always, ‘Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry that happened. It won’t happen again.’
Bowen Yang even said those conversations led to more “meta” opportunities like the hilarious Bowen’s Straight scene with Sydney Sweeney. If anything, that and the iceberg sketch should prove that Yang — and the cast members and writers overall — sometimes do their best work when thinking way outside of the box, rather than restricting themselves to the specifics of a person’s identity.
Looking at Bowen Yang’s work, it’s easy to see why he calls SNL the “cringiest thing in show business,” but his ability to literally say, “This is who I am. Take it or leave it,” has led to an acting career that includes movies like Fire Island, Bros, Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and — most recently — Wicked, where he juggled filming with SNL to play Galinda’s friend Pfannee.
You’ll also be able to catch him in the sequel Wicked: For Good when it opens on the 2025 movie calendar in November, and in the meantime, we’ll hopefully continue to see all sides of the comedian’s personality on Saturday Night Live. Tune in at 11:30 p.m. ET Saturdays on NBC and streaming on Peacock.
