“Anna Drezen and I wrote that earlier in the week. “I can’t believe I got to do that,” he says of the viral April 2021 performance. More standout moments include various monologues on the satirical news segment “Weekend Update,” where he has eviscerated the rise of Asian-American hate crimes, played a gay Oompa Loompa working for Timothée Chalamet’s Willy Wonka, and perhaps most memorably, won queer hearts as the sassy, bedazzled iceberg that sank the Titanic - a skit that Yang admits almost didn’t happen. During his time as a staff writer, he co-wrote (alongside out Los Espookys star Julio Torres) the delightfully queer pre-taped skit “The Actress,” in which Oscar winner Emma Stone played an extra on the set of a gay porn film, taking her role as an adult actor’s stepmother far too seriously. Necklace ETRO Jeans GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI ShoesĬertainly, Yang has been one of the most exciting voices to join SNL in recent seasons. LOUIS VUITTON Coat and Shirt TIFFANY & CO. And while there’s a lot more to the Emmy nominee than the identities he brings to TV, it’s not lost on Yang that he can now be a possibility model for someone else. Landing a spot on this show, which has launched the careers of too many iconic comedians to name, is a big deal for any budding talent. When he made the move from staff writer to featured, on-air cast member on the 45th season of SNL in 2019, Yang became the first Chinese-American, the third out gay male, and only the fourth actor of Asian descent ever to be cast in the history of NBC’s long-running weekly sketch comedy series. All that hard work led to his first big break in 2018, when he was hired by Saturday Night Live as a staff writer for season 44. With this rising visibility, Yang then secured small roles in projects like Broad City, The Outs, and High Maintenance. He also began performing improv routines at Upright Citizens Brigade. And it was during that time in his life that he met his best friend, Matt Rogers, and started the popular Las Culturistas podcast. After high school, he made the move to the big city to attend New York University. Yang, with this inspirational spark from Cho, has come far. “I can’t even put an estimation on what her impact is.” “I’m still excavating the meaning, and that’s so huge,” he says. Though he didn’t quite know it at the time, hearing someone like Cho performing at one of the world’s most famous live entertainment venues would have a profound effect on the way he would navigate life and his comedy career. It was the first time Yang, now 31, says he ever saw or heard someone like himself, a queer Asian-American, represented in media. SATURDAY Sunglasses FENDI Jacket, Shirt and Shorts CHANEL Necklace and Bag GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI Shoes “It was a really wild shift in my parameters of what could be funny and who could be funny and who could be funny in a way that was appealing to a lot of people.” That is also foreign enough to me that I laugh at it in a way that is not laughing at it but laughing with it,” he says. “She talks about her parents in a way that I relate to, but I also don’t. “I was hanging out with a bunch of drama club kids in high school my freshman year and one of my friends put on a Margaret Cho album, and it was just really mind-blowing to be like, ‘Wait, this woman is Korean, she is bisexual?’” Yang recalls of the first time hearing Cho’s 2002 live comedy special, Notorious C.H.O. It was there in his youth that he discovered comedy - specifically in the works of queer Korean-American icon Margaret Cho. The family lived briefly in Montreal before settling down in his hometown of Aurora, Colo. You feel like you’re connected to it.”Īs for Bowen’s origins, he was born in Australia to two very science-inclined parents from China his mother was an ob-gyn and his father is an engineer with a Ph.D. “I hadn’t been to a store like that in a year or so, and God, the sensual memory of it all,” Yang says. After all, food is a reminder of family, history, and home.
Many Asian-Americans and children of immigrants can relate: Being able to connect to culture, even in the smallest of ways, like via a supermarket, can help one stay grounded.
Yang cites a Chinese market called Jusgo and “a bunch of Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Malaysian stores around that area that are all heavenly, and that did bring me back to childhood.” The all-important question: Which Asian supermarket is his favorite? “Obviously, H Mart is king,” Yang says of the beloved Korean-American national grocery chain. But the Saturday Night Live star admits he was busy spending the day trekking around Atlanta - where he was visiting his sister - shopping and running errands at three different Asian supermarkets.
0 kommentar(er)
