Bowen Yang unpacked his late December departure from “Saturday Night Live!” during a vulnerable and emotional exit interview on Wednesday’s episode of his “Las Culturistas” podcast with co-host Matt Rogers.
After seven and a half years on the show, Yang made his last appearance as a regular cast member on “SNL” on Dec. 20 in an episode hosted by his “Wicked” co-star Ariana Grande and which featured Cher as a musical guest. His exit came as a surprise to dedicated “SNL” fans, especially coming off the departures of other cast members like Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim last summer.
However, Yang told Rogers he ultimately felt like it was the right time for him to step away from the legendary sketch comedy series.
“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,” Yang noted.
“I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to,” the “SNL” alum said. “I was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I’m so glad I did.”
Yang recalled a moment he shared with former “SNL” cast member Amy Poehler behind the scenes of an episode the latter hosted in early October.
“Amy Poehler, before she left the afterparty, when she hosted the second episode this season, puts a hand on my shoulder, looks into my eyes and goes, ‘We’re all waiting for you on the other side,’” Yang revealed. (Poehler, like Yang, is also the host of her own, immensely popular podcast, “Good Hang.”)
While speaking with Rogers, Yang touched on the complicated, demanding nature of his “SNL” job and why he feels the show forces everyone involved to go on their own, individual journeys.
“There is a shared experience of being at ‘SNL.’ There’s a collectivism there, but there’s an individualism in terms of, like, everyone is on their own journey there,” Yang explained. “Everyone has a different length of their tenure, completely different struggles. It is like what the experience of living is, which is like it is suffering to the point of having to arrive at a nihilism and then you create your own meaning from there.”
“Of course, the pull-quote is going to be like, ‘Bowen Yang calls SNL suffering,’” the “Las Culturistas” host jokingly added. Expanding on his previous comments, Yang touched on the unpredictable, improvisatory nature of “SNL,” calling the show a “dream factory.”
“You have an idea on Tuesday and it could be on TV Saturday. It doesn’t work like that anywhere else,” he explained. “I don’t have to memorize lines, I just read off the cue card. I pitched to the rafters. I say the credits don’t transfer. This isn’t how it works anywhere else in show business.”
Both Yang and Rogers dedicated some time to discussing the former’s final “SNL” sketch, which featured him as a Delta airport lounge employee working his final shift opposite both Grande and Cher. Yang called the sketch “metatextual” and “completely self-indulgent” and revealed that he broke down “sobbing at the read through in front of everyone.” He compared the sketch and his entire, final episode to “landing the Mars rover on, like, a square foot of terrain.”
“It’s my last shift at the Delta lounge, but in the sketch I say, ‘I’ve loved everyone here. I’ve loved every single person who works here,’” Yang explained. “I immediately broke down because … because I was telling the truth.”
“I just looked out, and I thought, ‘I’m so lucky that I ever got to work here, and I’m so lucky that I get to make this little statement that’s barely veiled, where I’m like, I love you all,’” the “SNL” alum revealed.
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