“Logo text Former Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang opened up about his departure from the show in an “exit interview” on his Las Culturistas podcast Wednesday. Yang’s podcast co-host Matt Rogers interviewed the actor and comedian about his experience on the iconic NBC sketch show, the emotional toll it takes to be among the”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Former Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang opened up about his departure from the show in an “exit interview” on his Las Culturistas podcast Wednesday.
Yang’s podcast co-host Matt Rogers interviewed the actor and comedian about his experience on the iconic NBC sketch show, the emotional toll it takes to be among the ensemble and that final sketch with Ariana Grande set in a Delta airport lounge.
“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 said of his decision to leave the show last month. “I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to… I was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I’m so glad I did.”
Yang framed his time on the show as being complicated, but ultimately incredibly rewarding and totally unlike anything else in the entertainment business.
“Everyone has a different length of their tenure, completely different struggles. It is like what the experience of living is, which is it is suffering to the point of having to arrive at nihilism, and then you create your own meaning from there. That is what that job is,” he said, before quipping: “Of course, the pull-quote is going to be like, ‘Bowen Yang calls SNL suffering.’
“You have an idea on Tuesday, and it could be on TV Saturday. It doesn’t work like that anywhere else,” Yang added. “It’s a dream factory. 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.”
SNL alums have gone on to become movie and TV stars, widely praised showrunners and filmmakers, and legendary comics and Yang, like many cast members before him, will have plenty of choices (aside from the podcast, of course).
“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 recalled.
Yang and Rogers spent a good deal of time on their show discussing the emotional final sketch, with Yang playing an employee at a Delta airport lounge working his last shift, with a sendoff from “Rhonda” (Grande) and a surprise appearance from Cher.
“I will absolutely cop to the fact that that Delta one sketch was, like, completely self-indulgent,” Yang said. “Because, what am I gonna do? Give a straight joke bag?”
It was a picture-perfect sendoff for Yang, and a capstone to his time as a cast member, though he told Rogers that, like any sketch on the show, it came down to the wire. Cher did not confirm her appearance until Saturday, and they had to write multiple versions in case she wasn’t able to make it. And even then, the live nature of the show meant that nothing was assured.
“It’s like landing the Mars rover on like a square foot of terrain — there were no guarantees about how any of it was gonna shake out,” Yang said. “Working there is just making peace with the fact that things are completely out of your control, down to the audience response to a joke… I think having that and going into it, down to, like, 12:55 am, not being sure if that sketch was gonna go to air. I was like: There’s a million reasons why I could get cut. Nothing is guaranteed. That is sort of it in a nutshell. It kind of is perfectly illustrative of what that job is.”
Yang said that while the sketch itself worked, it was at the table read earlier in the week where his emotions got the best of him.
“I was sobbing at the read through in front of everyone… it’s like a metatextual thing,” Yang said. “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’ — I immediately broke down because…”
“Because you knew it was a lie,” Rogers interjected jokingly.
“Because I was telling the truth,” Yang replied.
“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,” Yang added. “I’m so lucky.”