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This is Fresh Air.
I'm Terry Gross.
We've been hoping to get Bowen Yang on our show for a long time, and today it's actually happening.
The timing is great.
He's nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his performances as a cast member of Saturday Night Live.
This is his fourth time being nominated.
The first time was in 2021 for his first year as a Thank you for having me.
In 2022, they started doing a mock award show, the Las Culturistas Culture Awards, which Rogers has described as a comedy show disguised as an award show.
Earlier this month, the ceremony was televised for the first time on Bravo, and it was one of the most entertaining award shows I've ever seen.
It's streaming now on Peacock.
More about that later.
Bowen also starred in the movies Fire Island, this year's remake of The Wedding Banquet and he was in Wicked.
Bowen Yang's parents are Chinese immigrants.
His father is from a remote region of Inner Mongolia.
Bowen flew there right after the Las Culturistas award show.
We'll get to that later, too.
Bowen is the first Asian-American cast member of SNL and the third openly gay male cast member.
Some of the characters he's known for are the Chinese trade representative, Kim Jong-un, George Santos, the Chinese spy balloon and the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
The premise of a couple of his sketches is that he's not really gay.
He just pretends to be gay on SNL for the clout.
In one of the most talked about sketches of this year, he played Vice President J.D.
Vance at that contentious White House meeting with President Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Senator Marco Rubio, when Trump and Vance kept interrupting Zelensky, accusing Zelensky of interrupting them, of being disrespectful and of not showing his gratitude to the US.
It's the same sketch in which Mike Myers made an appearance as Elon Musk with his chainsaw.
Here's an excerpt with Mikey Day as Zelensky, Bowen Yang as J.D.
Vance, and James Austin Johnson as Trump speaks first.
President Zelensky, you want to say a few words?
Maybe tell Mr. Putin how much you love him and that you're sorry you invaded Russia.
Maybe offer him one night with your wife.
Mr. President, with all due respect, I... Excuse me?
I'm sorry, what?
I'm sorry, I have to jump in here because that's how we planned this.
What happened to thank you, okay?
Remember thank you?
You haven't said thank you to us once in the past 15 seconds up and yelling at you.
I've said thank you.
You didn't say it now!
But you didn't say it now when you walked in here.
You didn't say thank you.
You didn't say anything about us being handsome.
We're my handsome little boys.
You didn't have to stop once.
Look, he's right, and we're very handsome, okay?
Bowen Yang, welcome to Fresh Air.
I laugh every time I hear that.
You are so much fun in that.
How did you get cast as Vance, and how did you approach playing him?
Well, first of all, it's lovely to be here.
And I want to say that my delay in arriving at the show is not for lack of interest or not because of my aloofness, my natural aloofness.
I've been wanting to be here for a very long time.
So it's really nice to be here.
How did I get... cast as Vance.
This was about a year ago in August, right when the season was starting up.
Lorne had reached out and sort of had his plan for how he wanted to cast the main players in the general election.
And I was pretty resistant at first.
And after a few more conversations, I think I dutifully acquiesced.
And then I kind of went about it in the most child of immigrants way, where i like hired a dialect coach and i requested a screen test where i tried out different contact lenses, because i felt like so much of jd vance's sort of visual eeriness was in his eyes and i was like we have to get that down.
And then we tried facial hair options and i you know, i i took it as like a serious charge which may or may not have been the right way to go about it but um, it's been an interesting journey.
Vance is, like, so filled with anger.
Right.
And when I hear you, you sound, like, really bitchy.
I can't help it.
I think that's my own little wink through, like whatever characterization I try to like cover the self with.
Like you know, I do have to say, like I don't have the impressionist's ear, the way that someone like James Austin Johnson does, who every time he approaches someone, as in, he does an impression of them, it's just this exquisite pastiche of all of their qualities dial up to this very caricaturish, you know, maximum.
But I feel like, I don't know, I kind of maybe got overwhelmed by it.
When you were in high school, you got a senior superlative, something I've never heard of before as most likely to be on SNL.
So what is a senior superlative?
But the main question is, did you want to be on SNL when you were in high school?
And did everybody know that?
Well, a senior superlative, just like your most likely to's.
Most likely to... Most like to succeed.
Yeah, yeah.
Those things.
And then I think our class kind of embellished the language a little bit.
Instead of like class clown, they put the verbiage of most likely to be on SNL.
And I think it's totally incidental.
It's like...
Their way of calling me, like, a hammy kid, basically, which I was.
I never, ever, ever set my sights on SNL, but I was only the most enthusiastic fan.
I would bring VHS tapes to school to, like, put them in.
I mean, kids, there were these things called tapes, and, you know, you would play them, and...
I would just bring those in and just like show people when there was like a substitute teacher in class one day or something.
Well, like, hey, I brought like this past weekend's SNL if people want to watch it.
And somehow these teachers let me play it like a handful of times and I can't believe I got away with it.
But I was just very granularly obsessed with comedy and with SNL especially.
Something else in high school, you were named homecoming king.
So I figure either it was a very gay-friendly school or you were very successful at staying in the closet.
I would say yes to the first part, definitely no to the second part.
Not successful at all.
I think...
There's this like common trend among a lot of queer men my age who end up in some like communications, forward position, whether it's like they are the host of shows or they're actors, or they're writers or they, you know, are somewhat public-facing.
A lot of us did the morning announcements, and a lot of us were in the homecoming court.
And so I don't know what that says about a certain type of gregarious gay male growing up in the aughts, but I feel proud to be in that cohort of people.
This is a thing, I'm telling you, Terry.
Okay.
Tell us what your auditions were like, because I know you auditioned several times for Saturday Night Live.
Yeah.
I mean, I shudder to watch them now.
And they even did this thing where they were making documentaries in the lead up to the 50th anniversary.
And they played my auditions to me and filmed my reactions.
And it's, I'm stomping my foot.
Like, I have this visceral...
His response to not wanting to watch that version of myself, the person who, before he went down the chute of working at SNL, had no idea what the show was looking for.
And I think I sort of have to reevaluate that because that person is...
Like, he has something.
He has gumption to, like, just throw whatever at the wall and see what sticks.
Whereas now I feel, like, so much more prudent in my ideas.
I have fewer of them, it seems.
But back then, just because it was... Your first round was...
Five minutes of characters and impressions.
And my manager at the time said, you should put in a tape.
And on a lark, I said, sure.
I mean, they'll never hire an effeminate Asian man for that show.
And I just called up my buddy one day, Doug Wydick.
I went to his basement in Williamsburg, and I...
Put on all these different wigs and hats and just ran through five minutes of characters and impressions.
Michiko Kakutani was one of my impressions.
It was really esoteric.
That's what I was going to say.
She was the New York Times book critic.
How many people really know who the New York Times book critic is?
Right.
And I think I was probably leaning into it or counting on it being like okay, the joke here is so hyper-specific that at least you know, like as an audience like, what the perspective is.
The point of view is like, okay, this is someone who...
I was going to use the word limbed in an impression.
You know what I mean?
And I actually met her recently.
Oh, did she know?
Oh, she knew.
And she was so... I was so starstruck to meet her.
And she's just this really sweet, lovely person who for a long time like commanded the way books were sold.
I mean, it was just incredible to meet her and you know we talked about this, and I mean my portrayal of her, because she had only been photographed twice before and there was no like vocal recording of her speaking.
Like I took that as an open interpretation of what she would sound like.
So I really leaned into this aggressive, bullish person who was just tearing into Toni Morrison for whatever reason, even though that's not what she did.
But I just had fun with it.
And it was me calling Jonathan Franzen a hack or something.
These are things that Michiko Kakutani would never have done.
And I cleared all these rounds and then auditioned the first year in 2017, made it all the way to the Lorne meetings, did a callback where they tell you okay, now come up with five more minutes of new material.
And it's like when an artist releases a sophomore album.
It's like, well, the first album is... what their whole life had led up to at that point.
And now you have to like ask them to do something new in terms of output.
And, you know, I had to really dip back into the well and there wasn't much water in there.
And so it was multiple rounds of that, you know, one year of not getting it, coming back another summer doing another few rounds and finally getting hired to write there, which was very fun.
I think some of the cast members have a hard time at first figuring out who they are on the show, where they fit in, what kind of characters they'll be best for getting people to write for them and write in ways that the new cast members approve of.
What was it like for you figuring out where did you fit in?
What sketches would you be best at?
Who were you on the show?
Yeah, I think...
My first season of writing on the show was probably so helpful in terms of understanding all of these nonverbal cues.
And I think, learning the ropes and taking my lumps, that first season where you know as a writer you would have to sit next to Lorne each week and have him give notes on your sketch at dress rehearsal.
You know, you really develop this internal sense of okay, I understand how the show works in this very underpinned way.
That instinct will sort of guide you towards how to succeed on the show, on both your own terms and on the writers and Lauren's terms, and on the audience's terms, most importantly.
And I really credit that first season that Lauren has told me since, like, was the intention.
He was just like, I wasn't going to put you out there without a paddle.
Like, you're going to be scrutinized in a very different way.
And I was not going to set you up for failure.
Right.
So in one of the 50th anniversary shows you and Andy Samberg do a number.
That's about how everyone at SNL has anxiety.
And we also have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.
And I believe that that could be literally true.
So how do you deal with your anxiety when the show is in season?
And you know, it seemed like there's at least one, maybe two nights that are basically all-nighters and then you have to perform live and you never know.
If your sketch is going to be cut or shortened at the last minute, it feels like a lot.
Although it's not on every week, so there are a reasonable number of breaks.
Sure.
And those breaks are still not enough, I would say.
And here I am about to get knocked down again.
It is a very no matter what, no matter if you're succeeding or if you are struggling in some way, which is the universal SNL experience, as Andy really poetically rendered in that sketch.
I think that you just have to develop some kind of emotional regulation, and that is a very hard thing to ask comedians to do.
Part of the reason why we become comedians is because we are dysregulated emotionally, right?
And our way of sort of exercising something or just rationalizing something that we're going through is to do comedy about it.
But on top of the generative thing that we're doing at SNL, which is to write comedy, it is just a very high-stakes situation that I wasn't sure for a while like.
What the upside was.
I was like okay, it's great that I'm on TV, but also like I have no personal life.
I don't see my friends.
You know I can't take opportunities that come during the season like I don't know how this balances out.
Our director was Liz Patrick, who's also our wonderful director at SNL.
A lot of SNL alums in terms of the production staff and the producers and the writers were from SNL around the time that I was there.
And I realized in the weeks leading up to the award show I was like oh, this is what SNL gives you in terms of a boon or something.
You know how to handle a million different stimuli from a million different directions and you can manage that.
So this has been a pretty tumultuous time for you because you're nominated for an Emmy.
The Las Culturistas Culture Awards were just shown, you know, in August, early in August.
And right after that, you flew to China, to like inner Mongolia, where your father is from.
So how are you feeling?
I feel like the tumult has subsided, and I know that that is sort of in horror movie rules.
That just means that it is about to come up again.
Like, you know, the killer's going to jump out the pantry or something.
Not that there's a killer.
Like...
You know, don't drop your shoulders just yet.
I mean, it's fine.
I think I'm a little bit wired for it, which is not necessarily healthy, but I feel okay.
I mean, the China trip was really special and not what I expected.
And it was a trip that we took all the time growing up.
And then, since my sister and I have gone off to college and this was about 17 years ago, like those trips have been a little bit more infrequent, but it is always just a really nice check-in with myself, with my family obviously and um, i really cherish those, those journeys.
I want to get back to that in a few minutes.
Sure.
First, I want to talk with you about your Las Culturistas podcast with Matt Rogers.
So to give a sense of what the podcast is like or what it was originally supposed to be like.
Yeah.
I'm going to play the beginning of the first episode, which is from March 19th, 2016.
And the subject of this episode was the Grammys.
So it's you and Matt Rogers.
Aye aye aye, ding dong.
Hello everybody.
This is the lost culturistas podcast.
I'm matt rogers, i'm bowen yang and yes, we are lost culturistas.
What that means is we are your culture consultants.
Oh, we are out here to improve culture.
We're here to heighten culture.
We're here to talk about the big cultural events that you see happening on your television screens, on your laptops, on your mobile phones.
We're in a three-screen world.
Yeah, let me tell you.
What am I saying?
Look, Matt put this very eloquently a few moments ago.
Off the record.
He said we're going to attack culture, we're going to improve culture and we're going to irrigate culture.
This attack on your senses right now, what this is, is Matt and Bowen's Lost Culture Resos podcast.
What we're doing is we're talking about big things that you've seen, like the Grammys, the Oscars, the Super Bowl, maybe some debates happening election season.
We're talking about big, big, big-ass events that you're all talking about.
We're talking about them, too.
And let me tell you, we've got notes.
We've got notes, honey.
We've got some feedback that is constructive and sometimes destructive.
Oh, absolutely.
Honey, we are not limiting this to events either.
I don't think so, honey.
We are going after some cultural institutions.
Yeah, like today, we're really coming for the music industry.
Honey, the music industry is a monolith.
And we're not afraid.
I'm not afraid.
To speak truth to power.
Ay yi yi.
I mean, my voice is at a whole different octave.
Wow.
I heard you groaning.
I was groaning.
So what else were you groaning about?
Well, this is very similar to when they were showing me my audition from, you know, eight years ago.
This is the thing.
Like, these are all a series of larks.
Like, you know, we never thought that the podcast would get any listenership.
I mean, this kind of summarizes the whole premise of the podcast.
It's just two friends talking to each other.
It was just an excuse for Matt and I to have a playdate every week.
We pitched this network, all these ideas that were very high concept.
We settled on the one that was the lowest concept, which was just a pop culture podcast two people talking.
But we just somehow watched it grow.
And the same goes for the awards.
So the awards kind of budded out of this...
One summer, I think in 2021, when we didn't have a guest booked that week and that was not a common thing at the time.
And so we just kind of made a stream of consciousness list of nominees and categories for nominees.
Theoretical Las Culturistas Culture Awards.
And this awards things from all over the tapestry of human experience, from theme park attractions to breakfast foods to scenes from 90s television to clothing.
It was just completely maximalist and global and overwhelming.
It's meant to... be nonsensical almost.
And we put that out, announced that we were going to declare the winners, didn't happen.
And so then one year we threw an outdoor show and it was free.
We were overwhelmed by the crowds.
We had to turn people away.
And so then from that first year we were like okay, so the goal is to get this televised so that everyone can opt into this.
All right, time to introduce you again.
If you're just joining us.
My guest is Bowen Yang, and he's nominated for an Emmy for his performances as a cast member of SNL, and he also co-hosts the podcast Las Culturistas.
We'll be right back after this break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
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And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.
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And I'm a newsletter fan.
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This is a question you often ask people on the podcast, like what was the moment that they realized that like culture was their thing?
So how did you become obsessed with pop culture?
I was obsessed with pop culture as a closeted Canadian kid who then moved to the States and had to sort of re-acclimate to this new culture.
It was this big shock to move from Quebec to Colorado, where I was speaking primarily French at school and Mandarin in the house, and suddenly I had to fast track to English.
I mean, pop culture was this expedited way for me to like get on board with what people were talking about at school like, and what people were talking about at a birthday party, or like the shows that we would watch when we would have play dates or something like that.
You know, I say this SNL was this crash course in pop culture for me every week.
But the thing that made me love culture was the way that it gets digested, which happens to be what SNL kind of is.
And I was going to bring this up earlier when we were talking about the awards.
Matt and I, we get this question asked in this inverted way when we're talking to people.
They ask us, what was the culture that made you guys say culture was for you?
And then both of our answers are the 1998 Oscars, where, you know, it was Billy Crystal hosting.
It was James Cameron doing I'm the King of the World.
You know, it was just the culmination of the year, which felt dominated by Titanic.
And it was all funneled into this one night where Billy Crystal was doing song and dance numbers and where the pageantry of showbiz was kind of like almost grotesquely on display.
And so like that was just, it was intoxicating to a child.
And it kind of is this, you know, poetic thing where we've gotten to do like our version of that in our adulthood.
Did you have to hide any of your pop culture from your parents?
Because they would have considered it like too adult or just too like immoral.
Right.
I didn't have to too much because SNL was hard to explain to them.
Or they would just be like, OK, well, at least he's staying in on a Saturday night.
You know, like they didn't mind that too much.
I mean, the only thing that I ever had to hide was was a hardcover copy of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, because it was my sister's book.
And obviously she was allowed to like that.
But it was cultural contraband for a teenage boy like me to have any interest in that.
And so I just remember loving reading those books and then hiding it under my bed.
That was the kind of cultural smuggling that I was doing in my own house.
As if it was pornography.
As if it was pornography.
And by the way, I mean, wow.
Pre-smartphone days, I was having a sexual awakening to classical art books.
And I highly recommend today's youth to go about it the same way, because you were learning about art and you were figuring yourself out.
And I don't think the kids have that anymore.
What were a couple of the TV shows or music or books that really meant the most to you in your formative years?
I mean, I would say SNL and MADtv for sure.
I was really big into Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives.
This was like the really imperial phase of ABC primetime television.
You know I've said in the past, Sandra Oh kind of confused me occupationally because I was like I'm obsessed with her.
I guess I'll become a doctor.
And then...
After graduating with a chemistry degree in pre-med, I was like, wait, I made a mistake.
I actually wanted to be someone who was on TV.
And so that was such a weird garbling of the signal.
But I mean, I loved those shows.
I loved being more curious about the craft of writing because you know there would be like Shonda Rhimes podcasts, even back then about like this is what we were thinking and going through in the writer's room for this episode.
I mean, it opened the door to all of these other particulars about how TV was made.
And I mean...
I was watching The Simpsons and Seinfeld on syndication.
And I feel like I cherish this like three S's thing that a lot of like comedy nerds sort of hone in on, which is Simpsons Seinfeld, SNL.
And you know those writers kind of rotate things were used to rotate from those around those shows in the 90s and you know I kept tabs on like who wrote where and I just really kind of like nerded out on like the brainier aspects of comedy which I'm lucky that I was exposed to at a certain age.
Let me reintroduce you again, if you're just joining us.
My guest is Bowen Yang.
He's nominated for an Emmy for his performances as a cast member of SNL.
We'll be right back.
This is Fresh Air.
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You were wondering lately if you'd gotten too personal on the podcast Las Culturistas, in which you talk about pop culture and you and your co-host, Matt Rogers, share stories about your lives.
I'd love to hear how you draw and then redraw the line between what's public and what's private.
Like I know for myself, I'm always questioning myself before I get interviewed, like what do I want to share and what's really too private to share?
And I know the interview will probably be more interesting if I share more.
But part of me just wants to stay private, which is strange considering that, as the interviewer, I want people to tell me anything that they're comfortable telling me, the more the better.
Right.
So as somebody who is an increasingly public figure, does the line keep shifting?
And where is it now?
Whether or not I want the line to shift, I think it's not relevant anymore.
I think people have probably learned most of what there is to learn about me.
So it's too late.
It's too late, Terry.
And so you can probe away.
I mean now I have these light red lines, these pink lines on what I don't want to talk about, just in.
I don't ever want to be on a loop.
And that is the thing that I think maybe entraps some people, certainly myself.
If I keep playing the same thing over and over again out loud or in my head, I feel like I get a little bit caged by it.
Like it calcifies around me in a way that makes me go, well, this is the definitive thing about me.
The definitive thing about me is that I have mental health struggles.
Who doesn't?
The definitive thing about me is that I, you know, don't know what the line is in terms of sharing my personal life, even not to get too meta about it, but I feel like I just and you're so good at this too it's like we just want to excavate something and peel back something that is somewhat new, that hasn't really been exposed before, and I think I'm just in search of that constantly.
It's not that I don't want to talk about things.
It's that I want to figure out what else there is, But there's value in it.
There's value in sharing.
I mean, that's what I believe as an interviewer, even though I don't always come across that way as an interviewee.
But through comedy, through people confessing to their own neuroses and fears and vulnerabilities.
It's like oh God, I have company.
Right.
And I think that's how everybody feels.
And so, you know, I appreciate that sharing.
It's clarifying and helpful.
So let's talk a little bit about your life and obviously share what you're comfortable sharing.
And of course, I don't want to push you beyond that.
So your parents emigrated from China, first to Australia, where your father got his degree in mining explosives.
I didn't even never occurred to me.
Something I've never thought about is like, who are the people who deal with the mining explosives?
Right.
Never, ever thought about that.
But apparently your father is an expert in that.
And anyways, then they moved to Canada and then to Colorado.
I always think about how we lucked out moving here uh, here being the states in 98 we, without much friction i think, through a lot of different access points and luck like, got our green card within a couple years and then they naturalized when you know they hit that mark and so You know we've kind of cleared all these stage gates in terms of our citizenship.
And it's remarkable.
I remember one year my parents had, you know, their friends visit from China who were interested in potentially immigrating.
And this was, I think, 2011.
And my parents were both busy.
So then they asked if I could drive home. this family to this immigration lawyer.
So I did and I sat in with them on the meeting and it was kind of this heartbreaking moment where this lawyer, this Chinese immigrant lawyer, immigration lawyer, said it's just not going to happen right now unless you have this much money to have, you know, an investment immigration visa.
Like it's just.
I mean she just laid out all of the bureaucratic obstacles.
That kind of in the room I could sense like the hope sort of like leaving this family's like consideration.
It just felt so heartbreaking and I feel like I don't know there's that stayed with me and um, It makes me certainly cherish and not take for granted the journey that they went on and how lucky we are to have ended up where we are.
I mean, we're just upper middle class immigrant family.
And the other sort of existential, sort of wrinkle in this is that, like as the younger of two kids, if my parents had stayed in China then I would not have been born because of the one child policy.
And so there are all these different things right place, right time scenarios in my mind about like wow, like I am very, very fortunate to be where I am, where none of it would have materialized had this little butterfly effect thing not happened.
You recently traveled to Inner Mongolia, where your father's family is from, and he grew up there, right.
Yes.
So describe what it was like when he was growing up and what it looks like now.
It's incredibly rural, still is.
I mean, there's been a lot of urban development there, but...
My dad was the first in his family to go to college.
And right at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution.
You know, in the 80s he was in the first class of Chinese youth with my mother to be able to, you know, study abroad and, you know, get their degrees elsewhere.
And they were allowed to leave the country.
And so there was this big wave of immigration out of China in the 80s.
So my mom is from a city in Liaoning, which is a province north of North Korea.
And then Inner Mongolia, where my dad's from, is a misnomer.
It's not in Mongolia, but it's the province that is south of Mongolia that borders it.
So my dad grew up in a family of subsistence farmers, just growing crops potatoes and canola and whatever the weather allowed and, you know, a town of, i would say, 200 people.
I mean, it's just an incredibly different life, and so even going back this summer right after the culture awards, the day after the culture awards, was such i can't imagine a bigger whiplash.
Um, you know, my dad showed me all of these things that he built into the house, these little closets like where The fires would go to heat the beds.
All of these incredibly pre-technological things.
They were a happy family of farmers who had no access with urban life or any greater life outside of their township.
It's pretty remarkable to think about.
I get kind of overwhelmed at it, honestly.
It was kind of refreshing.
It really was just to go from This place where the value system was in comedy and in pop culture and in you know.
Glitz and glamour.
Glitz and glamour and fame.
And, you know, even though we're poking fun at it, like it was still buying into the system.
Right.
And so to go from there to China, where no one had heard, no one even knows like, what a red carpet is.
You know, like what that looks like in LA or in the States?
I mean, it was just kind of it gave me so much perspective.
Yeah.
So did he remain a mining explosives expert in the U.S.?
And did your mother remain an OBGYN because that's what she had trained for in China?
Yes.
She was top of her class at this premier medical school in China.
And then you know, it was always a trip like going back and having her friends train who went to school with her.
Just whisper in my ear, if she had stayed she would be the Surgeon General.
It's trippy.
And then I think about, obviously, how that means that I would not be on this planet.
It's all these sliding doors, but my dad has all of these stories of even him moving out of Inner Mongolia to the city to go to school.
He... had $11 in his pocket at the train station, tried fish for the first time at, you know, 22.
Like he was just eating potatoes and lamb for the first 22 years of his life.
Like he just had no concept of like how the world was so expansive.
Like to him, his world was just however many miles within the radius of his town.
Like I, It is this really overwhelming thing that I feel anytime I think about how charmed my own life is.
I'm just like, none of this was for granted.
So your parents were initially upset you were gay.
What was the turning point for them in realizing, like, it's okay?
Yeah, I think... this was more about like a concern for how difficult life would be.
And I understand that perspective.
Yeah.
For me, I think, once they saw me sort of becoming famous.
Well yeah, this is like the thought experiment that I don't like to have necessarily.
But, um, I think it was after I was like financially stable.
Cause I think it was compounded by the fact that I was trying to be a comedian professionally and that um, I was going on auditions and not booking the parts, which is, you know, so commonplace and happens more often than not.
I think they were just seeing this as like, oh, no, he is struggling in all these different ways.
And therefore, we are just worried about him.
And it all just, you know, they couldn't tell where one thing ended and another began.
Right.
And so I think, once they saw certain dreams come to light, I think that's when they were a little bit more relieved.
And maybe when they found what a huge following you had and how much people loved you, that helped too.
I would always tell my parents, like you know, I would book sundry jobs on comedy shows here and there.
Like, hey, mom, like, I'm on the show called Broad City or I'm on the show called High Maintenance.
Just things that New York comedians would book an appearance on.
And it was always like a very exciting thing.
Didn't mean anything to them until Matt and I did a segment of I Don't Think So Honey, on The Tonight Show.
And then my mom went into work the next day and then all of her coworkers were like you must be so proud that Bowen was on The Tonight Show doing comedy.
And, oh my goodness he was.
That was when it took some sort of external validation through, like her peers, for her to be like okay, maybe he's going to be okay.
And I didn't really have an appreciation for, like what the proof of concept had to be for her, in order for her to feel a little bit more at ease with the idea that I was trying to be in showbiz.
You were in the closet, I think, for a good deal of college, in part because your sister was going to NYU and you were too.
And your sister was supposed to keep an eye on you.
So did you have to suppress some of yourself in order to do that?
And what was it like when you came out?
And if you did suppress anything, you could just like start expressing it instead of suppressing it.
Both times that I came out to them, it was not really on my terms.
The first time in high school was through the family computer.
Remember those?
And it was that my mom had stumbled on a chat window where I was talking about it.
And then...
Fast forward to college.
I had gone back in the closet after conversion therapy and then I was in senior year of high school and I was just at home and then, out of nowhere, my mom had called a little bit distressed, or very distressed, I should say, and was saying how you know, she would never accept me being gay.
And this was not okay and I should fly home and talk it out with her and my father in person.
And just one day it just happened.
It's very bizarre.
I never had the opt-in to just tell someone on my own terms.
Or not to tell someone, but just to tell my family.
And so that's been a thing that I've kind of romanticized as someone who hasn't been able to do that.
Even on this trip to China...
I'd hired a tutor in Mandarin to sort of help me with the vocabulary, the literal vocabulary of coming out.
And it never came up because I think Chinese social media sort of did it for me.
And my uncles and my cousins and my aunts would be like, oh my gosh Bowen, you're really blowing up on social media.
And the comments are so interesting.
And they're really, you know, trying to guess where you're from.
But then also, I mean, what they couldn't have missed were the comments that were saying isn't it so funny how butchy is?
And I think it was another don't ask, don't tell thing where they were like, we know.
And I had it confirmed by my sister by the end of the trip.
She was like, they know.
And I was like, okay, great.
And so it's never been through me.
I have never worked up the nerve to tell someone in my family.
I don't know what the value is on, If that's good or bad, you know.
I just kind of know that I have not had that experience.
And so therefore I kind of romanticize that idea.
Let me reintroduce you again.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Bowen Yang.
He's nominated for an Emmy for his performances as a cast member of SNL.
We'll be right back.
This is Fresh Air.
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At Fisher Investments, we prefer to use a sizable group of experts with a diverse skill set, diverse knowledge, all collaborating together to deliver what hopefully, is optimal advice for our clients.
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So you were in Wicked, and I have to say it's a pretty small part.
It was small.
It was very tiny.
Yeah, but Wicked means a lot to you.
When was the first time you saw Wicked?
And I assume that was on stage, obviously.
Yes.
When was the first time you saw it?
How old were you?
And what did it mean to you?
Why did it reach you so deeply?
So the interesting thing about Wicked is that I didn't get to see it until I was well into my adulthood.
Like, I was even...
Gosh, I had this really weird compulsion around like not lying but just like embellishing the truth growing up.
And it's developed into this thing now where I'm a terrible liar.
I can't do it as an adult, as someone in their 30s.
But like, growing up it was this thing of like well, if you didn't see Wicked, then like you have no business being.
You know someone in the like, a theater kid, or you know what I mean.
Like it was just, when it came out, it was just such a phenomenon.
Around 2003 I was in high school and I remember going to the library getting the original Broadway cast recording and it was life-changing, even in that entry point.
And the thing that I would embellish.
Especially around late high school, I was just like yeah yeah, I saw the national tour of it.
I never did, Terry.
I think I just made up this lie because it felt like the right thing to say in order to justify this passion that I had for musical theater.
And I saw it finally for the first time on the West End in London in 2022, I would say, or 2021.
It was really crazy how I was like wow, this is all culminating into this moment where I'm finally seeing the show that has still meant so much to me.
And I knew it front to back.
And I just remember seeing it for the first time.
I saw it with my co-writer at SNL, Celeste Diem.
And they were a playwright.
They were a trained playwright.
And I turned to them.
I go, wow, like, this is incredible.
Like, theater is, like, the most emotionally immediate form of entertainment, right?
And they were like, yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of it.
Like, it's just when Elphaba sings those high notes, like, you feel it in your soul.
And so, you know, the first time I saw it, it did mean a lot to me in terms of like, going through my personal history and being like why did I feel the need to say that I'd seen this when I didn't have this actual material encounter with it until much later?
It was not the answer I was expecting.
No, I know.
It's like, you know, I've shared this, but it's not something that like I... It's weird.
It's like I don't want it to make it seem like I was or still am like someone who doesn't tell the truth.
It was just this thing that I felt, the pressure to like have some sort of social proof of where I had to be like yeah, you know, like I did see it.
But we were just not a theater-going family.
We just didn't have...
Thank goodness for public libraries.
I went to the library and I sought it out.
And I kept that CD in my Walkman for weeks.
I really ran the overdue charge on it.
I just feel like intervening here and saying I think it's really important, when it comes to culture, to stand up for what you believe in, no matter how odd that may seem.
You know what I mean?
To really endorse the things you love and feel free to criticize the things that you don't, and feel honest about saying no, I didn't have time to see it.
I love that now.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, this is the thing that I delight in now, where I'm like I didn't get a chance to see it and there's too much stuff.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's something we can all agree on.
I mean, I think I did have this anxiety growing up around, like making sure I was on top of everything that I did see every movie that you know.
Well, that's part of the immigrant thing, isn't it?
Yeah, totally.
Being the child of immigrants who's also gay.
Uh-huh.
I mean, you had to work to fit in.
Totally.
And it still feels like...
This is the thing around being obsessed with The Simpsons and Seinfeld and SNL growing up.
It was like it felt like it was the required reading.
Like it felt like there was this syllabus growing up in terms of pop culture.
And now you know, with all of the options for better or for worse, like you can just sort of chart your own path.
Bowen Yang, I'm so glad we finally got to make this happen.
We've been trying to get you on for a long time.
Thank you so much for coming today.
It was really a pleasure.
This was sublime.
Thank you, Terry.
Bowen Yang is nominated for an Emmy for his performances on Saturday Night Live.
He co-hosts the podcast Las Culturistas.
The satirical Las Culturistas Cultural Awards ceremony is streaming on Peacock.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Spike Lee.
His new film Highest to Lowest is about a powerful music mogul targeted in a ransom plot who must fight for his family and his legacy.
It's a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film High and Low.
He'll talk about the inspiration behind this film and others from his long career.
I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Reboldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and John Sheehan.
Our digital media producer is Molly C.V.
Nesker.
Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.
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