Bowen Yang Says ‘SNL’ Host “Made Multiple Cast Members Cry”
After more than five years on Saturday Night Live, Bowen Yang has some stories.
The Emmy Award nominee recounted some of the worst behavior he’s seen from a celebrity host on the NBC sketch comedy show “without naming names” as he recently appeared on Watch What Happens Live.
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“This man, this person, this host made multiple cast members cry on Wednesday before the table read because he hated the ideas,” said Yang while playing ‘Truth or Kink’ with his Las Culturistas podcast co-host Matt Rogers.
He added that the situation was “terrible” as Rogers shook his head and joked his co-host has “got new PR and everything.”
Yang also responded to a fan who asked which of his SNL sketches was the “biggest bomb” and how he handled it.
“When Ayo Edebiri hosted this past season, we wrote a live sketch where it took place in an elevator, and she and I were, like, telling everyone that we should all make out or something because the elevator got stuck,” he recalled. “Then, for some reason, it got turned into a pre-tape under our noses, and we had to adapt to that… It just didn’t go as well as I had hoped.”
The comedian added, “And you just deal with it. Comedy’s subjective, you never know how it’s gonna play in front of a specific audience. But it’s fine, you let it roll off your back.”
After joining the SNL writing staff in 2018, Yang was promoted to on-air talent a year later for Season 45. His performance on the sketch comedy show recently earned him his fourth Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The milestone 50th season of SNL kicks off Sept. 28 on NBC with cast alum Maya Rudolph returning to reprise her impression of Vice President Kamala Harris amid the 2024 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night premieres Oct. 11 in theaters, recounting the night of the chaotic first-ever SNL broadcast in 1975. The film stars Gabriel LaBelle as a young Lorne Michaels, alongside a star-studded cast embodying some of the show’s comedic legends.
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