Bowen Yang interview: ‘Saturday Night Live’
“Saturday Night Live” ended its 49th season on May 18, and now all eyes are set for the fall of 2024, when the monumental 50th season will begin. “I get awestruck at that idea and that concept,” reveals Bowen Yang, who just wrapped up his fifth year as a cast member. “It’s all tied back to [showrunner and creator] Lorne Michaels and all of the producers who’ve been on that journey with him and us, and who’ve supported people and launched their careers. It’s really, for lack of a better word, crazy to think about.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Yang is a three-time Emmy Award nominee for “SNL,” first for writing in 2019 and then for acting in 2021 and ’22. Winning an award this year would be “another pipe dream,” he tell us. “This is a really hackneyed thing I’ll say: it was just an honor to be nominated. And I’m really proud of those seasons … I always share those moments with everybody at the show — with the cast, the crew, the writers, producers, everybody. Because again, it is a group effort. [Winning an Emmy] would mean the world.”
Some of the notable characters that Yang played this year were: disgraced Republican Congressman George Santos, a fed-up director in Maya Rudolph‘s “Coffee Commercial” sketch, a terrible doctor who informs the wrong family about a dead loved one in the Ryan Gosling episode, a cute little Sonny Angel doll in Dua Lipa‘s massive collection, Christopher Columbus and Truman Capote on Weekend Update, and a “straight” version of himself who crushes on Sydney Sweeney.
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Reflecting on the entirety of Season 49, Yang readily admits, “I do also love that I am at a place now, emotionally and personally and professionally, where I think, on my own rubric, by my own standard, I’m proudest of this past season for myself the most. I had the broadest range. I got to lead a cold open by myself. I got to do all these different things and I’m really, really proud of that. Thinking about Emmys is always great, just in terms of the wider year in television.”
Rudolph’s instantly viral “Mother” song and dance number from her May 11 monologue was “incredible,” raves Yang. “She is another host who embodies all of the right things. But then to have her be an alumnus, just to know that she’s taken her lumps and put in the hard yards? She’s such a natural and is one of the best to ever do it, in my opinion. And to have that high production monologue, only someone like her can pull that off.”
Also in our exclusive video interview, Yang talks about what it was like feeding “cookie crumbles” to Gosling who “does not want to eat anything on camera,” why the “Bowen’s Straight” short video was “so fun” to do, and who he considers to be some of the “unsung heroes” behind the scenes of “Saturday Night Live.”
