Bowen Yang lost everything about the “live” aspect of “Saturday Night Live.”
“For the first ‘at home’ performance, everyone in the players texted each other, and I sent pictures of Saratoga Springs bottles that have pages on each table,” the 29-year-old comedian recently recalled (what again)?) Zoom from (where else?) his apartment in Brooklyn. “Those are all the little things that I take for granted … I will give anything to experience them, safely, again.” Until then, he had “dreamed in a small Zoom box,” trying to stay creative and connected.
Even though he has felt nothing but luck lately, sitting at home is a strange fad for Yang, who has barely stopped moving for the past few years. While writing for “SNL” in 2018, he also photographed the Awkwafina Central Comedy series (“Nora From Queens”), toured the country with his popular podcast (“Las Culturistas” with Matt Rogers) and wrote for the upcoming Apple TV Plus musical starring his co-worker “SNL” Cecily Strong.
By the time his promotion to membership was announced in the fall of 2019, Yang was almost too tired to absorb it. “I’m really burning – and in some ways I think that’s good,” he said, “because I just got numb.”
He then booked himself a solo vacation that made him beat and absorb it all, for the better and worse. “I just decompressed and let everything about me,” he said, with careful consideration from someone who knew when he needed to put on a verbal needle. “That gave me a perspective that I could not negotiate with myself for the 12 months leading up to that point.”
Adding to the pressure are the inevitable facts that Yang was one of the first gay men who openly starred in the show, and his first Chinese-American star, period. There is no fact that escapes Yang, but he approaches his place in comedy with enthusiastic opportunism. After auditioning for “SNL” several times, he said he actually felt more free to do things himself after he ran out of famous Asian figures to impersonate. “I really enjoy the challenge of overcoming what might be considered a ‘defect’,” he said. “I can only have fun with it, wearing a wig and pretending [former New York Times book critic] Michiko Kakutani. I was like, ‘Nobody else can do this.’ “
Since then, Yang has a surreal moment that is more real in “SNL” than he can count. He handled the impression of escape from presidential candidate Andrew Yang and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, because no one else could do it. He slaps RuPaul’s face in the “Dynasty” parody set up in the coal mine and lectures to Harry Styles about using company Instagram to promote pitiful thirst traps. The character of the initial audition – including manic SoulCycle instructors and people from “choked posters” everywhere who had more than the resemblance passed by Yang – made him enter the event, a fact that still shocked his mind.
No matter his role, Yang’s delivery – somehow dry and histrionic at the same time – made him stand out in a legendary show that had taught him the basics of American pop culture when he and his family first moved from Canada to the United States. “I’m 8 years old, and I might be too young for that, but that’s when I started watching ‘SNL,'” Yang said. “That’s when I felt an American sense of humor.” He remembers sitting in 2000 to watch his first episode, which was hosted by Charlize Theron, and thought that he would be important if he were the host of “SNL.” At that point, he said, the show “opened all these doors within the scope of my pop culture knowledge.”
While Yang initially went to NYU for his medical school, improvisation and pop culture quickly became the cornerstone of his life before taking over completely. The sour, festering take on pop culture and celebrities are now bread and butter. (Look at lip-sync performances from famous monologues – from Sandra Oh plea about “Gray’s Anatomy” to Meryl Streep insulting drawling in “The Devil Wears Prada” – and thank you later.) It even forms the backbone of “Las Culturistas,” where he and Rogers exchange ideas about their current obsession and ask simple questions to their guests: “What is first piece of culture that makes you say that culture to you? “
Bowen Yang with Scarlett Johansson (left) and Kate McKinnon in the “choking poster” play in December 2019.Will Heath / NBC
For Yang, this is complicated. Finding the culture that spoke to him, a Chinese-American boy who grew up in Colorado, meant exploring his own confusing wants and needs. Like many strange people, he still found an important influence with a jolt, “Oh, that’s what happened” self-awareness. Recently, she remembered how Michelle Branch’s album “The Spirit Room” inspired a dreamy fantasy that she misunderstood. “I kind of made an impression on Michelle’s diva worship that I didn’t recognize,” he said. “It was truly one of the few times female idol worship was related to sexual counting, and was in a confined space where I would confuse the two. I thought I was in love with him!”
Who doesn’t remember a certain time when he had a light bulb over the head of “I’m gay”. What he remembers is that others show him with ridicule, which makes it too easy to internalize the idea that he messes with just being himself.
“The way I see the strangeness now is that, the best scenario, another weird person reflects it back to you,” he explained. “The worst case scenario, which happened to me, is to make people say, ‘Yes, you like Michelle Branch, so you must be gay.’ Someone pointed out how something about you is unusual, and you through some Kübler-Ross mourned with that. “
Bowen Yang as former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Will Ferrell as Tom Steyer in the episode “SNL” in November 2019.Will Heath / NBC
Twenty years later, Yang rose precisely because of the “unusual” qualities that had haunted him, embracing comedy and collaborative communities in particular, very strange. He is eager to look forward to a future where a child like him will not have the same experience, but is also careful to remain aware of the history and activists that will allow it. Even this year, staring at the Pride season where he can’t line up or beat up on the low-key, “hedonistic” bar party, which will surely maintain perspective. As he explained: “The program of pride has been canceled, but we don’t call it injustice, because we know what injustice is like.”
Now, with the double benefits of hindsight and foresight, Who has nothing but affection for a child who steals a copy of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” from his sister and hides it under his bed if anyone might find it too gay or feminine for a boy to read.
“I smiled very dear, very sad when I thought about it,” he said. “Just like,‘ Oh, that’s cute. Look how far we’ve come. “
