Brace yourselves, Saturday Night Live fans. Bowen Yang, a cast MVP since 2019 known for his portrayals of (among many others) the iceberg that sank t
Brace yourselves, Saturday Night Live fans. Bowen Yang, a cast MVP since 2019 known for his portrayals of (among many others) the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Kim Jong Un, and JD Vance, says he’s started thinking about when he might leave the show, especially after seeing how ecstatic former cast members are in their post-SNL lives.
A writer on the show since 2018, Bowen Yang became an onscreen regular in 2019—shockingly, the first person of Asian descent named to SNL’s cast. (It should be noted, however, that Fred Armisen, who left the show in 2013, discovered years later that his grandfather was Korean during an episode of PBS ancestry series Finding Your Roots.) Since then, he’s continued to record the podcast La Culturistas with co-host Matt Rogers, and starred in films like Wicked and the newly released The Wedding Banquet.
It’s been a grueling schedule for the actor, who told Vanity Fair in 2022 that “It’s all hard, and I will say it was exhausting. It is really funny to me how I wrapped Fire Island the week after that, I get back to work, and then the week after I finish the season, the movie comes out.”
Yang, whose parents were scientists in China who immigrated first to Australia, then to Canada and the US, once told Vanity Fair that his ultimate goal was to follow the career trajectory of Aidy Bryant, who left SNL in 2022. “She understood this is a business where not everything is handed to you and you have to make your own work,” Yang said. “I’m not setting too many expectations for myself. I’m just trying to create opportunities for something interesting.”
But as those opportunities are created, others must be left behind, that is, if Yang wants to get some sleep. “I had some pretty rough moments this season at SNL, especially toward the end, where I was like the rope ended six months ago,” Yang told VF in 2022. “The candle has been melted, has been burned away.”
But in a novel interview, it appears that Yang is thinking about when to pick up his candle and head home. Speaking with People, Yang says that during the show’s star-studded 50th anniversary celebration, he started to understand “what life after the show is like and how beautiful it is.”
“So many people, no matter how long they were at the show, are just with their families and loving their lives and not letting the years take away any of that experience for them,” Yang says.
Yang also acknowledged that change is at the core of SNL, which means that everyone eventually moves on. “It’s this growing, living thing where new people come in and you do have to sort of make way for them and to grow and to keep elevating themselves,” he says. “And that inevitably requires me to sort of hang it up at some point — but I don’t know what the vision is yet.”
Until that vision snaps into focus, Yang remains on deck at Saturday Night Live, which returns on Saturday, May 3 with second-time host Quinta Brunson and former American Idol contestant Benson Boone.
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