“I don’t think so, honey: Disrespect to the sprinkle cookie!” shouts Matt Rogers straight to camera. He’s flanked by his BFF and partner in podcastin
“I don’t think so, honey: Disrespect to the sprinkle cookie!” shouts Matt Rogers straight to camera. He’s flanked by his BFF and partner in podcasting Bowen Yang, who nods enthusiastically. He’s on a soap box, stumping for Real Housewives of New Jersey star Melissa Gorga’s novel line of baked goods. “Even Bethenny, on her TikTok, reviewed the sprinkle cookie and she was like, ‘You know what? They’re not bad,’” he continues, punctuating his words with enthusiastic claps. “And that is a huge rave from Bethenny Frankel, which does not come easily. You’ve seen the way she is with some skin care out there.”
This, in a nutshell, is Las Culturistas—Rogers and Yang’s incredibly popular podcast, produced by Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio. The pair has an uncanny knack for taking disparate things—see Gorga’s sprinkle cookies, Frankel’s TikTok—and putting them in comedic conversation with each other. Rogers and Yang, who met as freshmen at NYU in the aughts, have been perfecting this formula since launching Las Culturistas on the Forever Dog network in 2016.
The podcast predates either of their ascents in Hollywood. These days, Yang, 34, has five Emmy nominations under his belt as a Saturday Night Live breakout star, and a plum role in Wicked. Rogers, 35, has made memorable supporting turns on comedy series like I Love That for You and No Good Deed, as well as his touring musical comedy special, Have You Heard of Christmas?, streaming on Paramount+ Premium. Although their careers have gone down separate paths, they’ve also continuously intersected—whether by starring together in the Emmy-nominated gay romantic comedy Fire Island or appearing as a bickering couple on Amazon Prime’s Overcompensating.
Throughout it all, Las Culturistas has remained the tie that binds the two best friends—and what connects them to their legion of fans, whom they affectionately call “Readers, Kayteighs, Publicists, Finalists, and Kyles.” The show is a press tour must-stop for A-list talent like Mariah Carey and Chappell Roan. Recent guests have included everyone from Sarah Jessica Parker to Michelle Obama, all of whom have listened to Yang and Rogers rattle off “rules of culture” and answered the podcast’s animating question: “What was the culture that made you say culture was for you?” Las Culturistas won podcast of the year at the iHeartPodcast Awards in March, and was recently named one of Time’s 100 best podcasts of all time.
This year, the faithful RKPFKs are in for a special treat. The Las Culturistas Culture Awards, Rogers and Yang’s bespoke comedy show that masquerades as an awards ceremony, will be broadcast on Bravo on August 5 at 9 p.m. and will be streaming the next day on Peacock. While it’s the fourth edition of their faux-awards extravaganza, this is also the first time Yang and Rogers are putting the Culture Awards on television. Suffice it to say, they’re feeling the pressure.
“I had to wake up and take a breath and just strap in,” Yang tells me. Rogers’s nerves are manifesting in a more visceral way. “I wake up my eyes and my first instinct is, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’” he says. “I do have that thing in the morning where I’m like, ‘Ah!’”
Yang steps in as a supportive friend: “You’re having an anxiety moment. But you’re working through it by acknowledging the state.”
For all their similarities as gay millennials in their mid 30s, Yang and Rogers fill separate niches. Yang, who graduated NYU with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, is more cerebral, and often more reserved, while Rogers—a powder keg of personality from Long Island with seemingly no off-switch—is more emotional. (He has a classic refrain on the podcast: “I don’t know my words, but I do know my heart.”) Of course this manifests in their approach to work and how they deal with pressure. “I feel like I have very anxious responses to stress, and Bowen can have more depressive responses to stress,” says Rogers. “Those two things interact in interesting ways. It’s been an emotional few weeks.”
When I arrive at Jack Studios in Chelsea, the vibe is anything but depressed. The duo is recording promo for their awards show, recreating their iconic final podcast segment, “I Don’t Think So, Honey!” in which guests rant about something in culture that irks them for one full minute. (Iconic renditions include Tina Fey’s “Bowen Yang giving his real opinions about movies on this podcast” and comedian Aaron Jackson’s now classic “going to church on Sunday and Wednesday.”) They’re a little less than three weeks away from showtime at a glitzy, star-studded ceremony hosted at LA’s Orpheum Theatre. The telecast tapes on July 17, weeks before airing on Bravo—a far cry from the basements and bars where Yang and Rogers cut their teeth as 20-somethings trying to break into the comedy business.
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