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Bowen Yang is getting candid about about his Saturday Night Live exit.
The Wicked star opened up on the January 7 episode of his Las Culturistas podcast (which he co-hosts with IRL friend Matt Rogers) about his decision to leave the iconic NBC series after seven seasons.
“This is honestly what’s behind it: it’s time,” Yang revealed. “You would do seven seasons, and then you would scoot.”
Yang added, “COVID and the current media landscape, the current entertainment ecosystem, is so turbulent that people have completely valid reasons for staying longer, or, in a lot of cases, don’t have the privilege of staying on as long as they would like to. I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to.”
Addressing his unexpected decision to leave SNL halfway through season 51, Yang said, “I was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I’m so glad I did.”
Yang was the show’s first-ever Asian cast member. During the podcast episode, he also discussed criticism he regularly received online.
“I feel like I was really bogged down the entire time I was there about the idea that there was no range in anything I did,” Yang said. “I knew I was never gonna play the dad. I was never gonna play the generic thing in sketches. It’s a sketch show. Each thing is like four minutes long. It is short and collapsed by necessity, so therefore it plays on archetypes.”
“These archetypes,” he continued, “are also in a relationship with generic things, and there is a genericism in whiteness and in being a canvas to build upon. I came in pre-stretched, pre-dyed. People had their over-determinations on what I was, which was: ‘Oh, that’s just the gay Asian guy on “SNL.”‘ So anytime I would try to work outside of that, it got completely ignored or it still got collapsed to, ‘Oh, he’s being gay and Asian as always.'”
Rogers added that Yang did so many things. “I don’t think people necessarily know they’re being homophobic when they say that,” to which Yang agreed. “I think range is a myth and it’s all about palatability, whether you’re getting taxed on it or you are subsidized.”
“Do they knock Pete Davidson for range?” Rogers added. “Or does he get to get away with it because it’s cool and within a male gaze?”
Yang’s final episode of SNL aired December 20 and was hosted by his friend and Wicked co-star Ariana Grande. He even made an appearance during her opening monologue to sing a musical parody of Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.
During his time on the show, Yang was nominated for the supporting comedy actor Emmy four times.
