{"id":1611,"date":"2020-06-04T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/bowen-yang-dishes-on-coming-out-and-making-snl-history\/"},"modified":"2020-06-04T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T18:00:00","slug":"bowen-yang-dishes-on-coming-out-and-making-snl-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/bowen-yang-dishes-on-coming-out-and-making-snl-history\/","title":{"rendered":"#Bowen Yang dishes on coming-out and making \u2018SNL\u2019 history"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Bowen Yang dishes on coming-out and making \u2018SNL\u2019 history<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Bowen Yang misses everything about the \u201clive\u201d aspect of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first \u2018at home\u2019 show, everyone in the cast was texting each other, and I sent pictures of the Saratoga Springs bottles that the pages have at their desks,\u201d the 29-year-old comedia<\/a>n recalled recently over (what else?) Zoom from (where else?) his Brooklyn apartment. \u201cIt\u2019s all the little things I took for granted \u2026 I would give anything to experience all that, safely, again.\u201d Until then, he\u2019s \u201cdreaming in little Zoom boxes,\u201d trying to stay creative and connected.<\/p>\n

Though he feels nothing but lucky these days, sitting at home is a strange mode for Yang, who\u2019s barely stopped moving over the past couple years. While writing for \u201cSNL\u201d in 2018, he was also shooting Awkwafina\u2019s Comedy Central series<\/a> (\u201cNora From Queens\u201d), touring the country with his popular podcast (\u201cLas Culturistas\u201d with Matt Rogers) and writing for an upcoming App<\/a>le TV Plus musical comedy starring his \u201cSNL\u201d coworker Cecily Strong.<\/p>\n

By the time his promotion to cast member was announced in fall 2019, Yang was almost too exhausted to absorb it. \u201cI was fully burnt out \u2014 and in some ways I think that was good,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I was just fully numb.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then booked himself a solo vacation that let him take a beat and absorb it all, for better and for worse. \u201cI just decompressed and let it all hit me,\u201d he says, with the careful consideration of someone who knows when he needs to thread a verbal needle. \u201cIt gave me the perspective I could not confer upon myself for the 12 months leading up to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to the pressure were the unavoidable facts that Yang is one of the cast\u2019s first openly gay men to star on the show, and its first Chinese-American star, period. Neither fact escapes Yang, but he approaches his place in comedy with enthusiastic opportunism. After auditioning for \u201cSNL\u201d a few times, he says he actually felt freer to do his own thing after he ran out of famous Asian figures to impersonate. \u201cI really enjoyed the challenge of working around what might have been perceived as this \u2018handicap,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI could just have fun with it, put on a wig and pretend to be [former New York Times book critic] Michiko Kakutani. I was like, \u2018No one else can do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Yang\u2019s had more surreal moments on \u201cSNL\u201d than he can count. He\u2019s tackled breakout impressions of presidential hopeful Andrew Yang and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as no one else could. He\u2019s slapped RuPaul across the face in a \u201cDynasty\u201d parody set in a coal mine and lectured Harry Styles about using a corporate Instagram to promote his sad thirst traps. Characters from his initial auditions \u2014 including a manic SoulCycle instructor and the man from the ubiquitous \u201cchoking poster\u201d who bears more than a passing resemblance to Yang \u2014 made it onto the show, a fact that still blows his mind.<\/p>\n