Bowen Yang

Bowen Yang (Chinese: 杨伯文; born November 6, 1990) is an American actor, comedian, podcaster, and writer from Aurora, Colorado. He co-hosts a comedy pop-culture podcast, Las Culturistas, with Matt Rogers. He also posts pop-culture lip-syncing videos on Twitter. Since September 2018, he has been on the writing staff of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Yang was promoted to on-air cast for SNL's 45th season, in September 2019, becoming its first Chinese-American, third openly gay male, and fourth Asian American cast member.

Yang was born in Brisbane, Australia, to a family that had emigrated from China in the 1980s.They moved to Montreal, and then to Aurora, Colorado, where he was raised. He graduated from Smoky Hill High School in 2008 where he was voted "Most Likely to Be a Cast Member on Saturday Night Live". In high school, his calculus teacher, Adrian Holguin, also was Yang's coach for Smoky Hill's improvisational comedy group Spontaneous Combustion. Holguin noted that Yang was not only "very smart", but also "had the ability to see things from an alternative perspective". Yang cites Holguin's coaching influence's "helping him craft his comedic sensibilities", while his former teacher says he stressed in all his improv students to develop "characterization and honest reactions" in their works.

Yang was inspired by Sandra Oh's character Dr. Cristina Yang on Grey's Anatomy, and aspired to be a doctor. He graduated from New York University (NYU) with a bachelor's degree in microbiology. He realized he was inspired by Oh, but for her acting ability, so he pursued comedy.

At NYU he met Matt Rogers with whom in 2016 he would start Las Culturistas, a weekly comedy podcast where Yang "unapologetically expresses his personality, story and himself by sharing his experiences as a member of the LGBTQ community". He was also on the improv team Dangerbox.

Yang has also performed improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

The podcast Yang co-hosts with Matt Rogers, Las Culturistas, is described by Vulture as both "delightfully screwy" and a "two-headed snark routine". As of September 2019, the podcast has 170 episodes. Each one opens with an interview with a pop culture guest, then goes to one-minute rounds of "I Don't Think So, Honey!" (IDTSH) where the hosts and guests each expound on pet peeves. IDTSH has also morphed into its own live show. Yang credits the Las Culturistas podcast with Rogers for building his fanbase, in 2018 It was nominated for a Shorty Award recognizing the best in social media. Yang appeared in shows such as Shrill, Comedy Central's Broad City, a Vimeo web series The Outs, and the HBO web comedy High Maintenance. He was a supporting cast member in the 2019 film Isn't It Romantic. Yang also performed stand-up on HBO's 2 Dope Queens. He played fashion designer Alexander Wang in a sketch series on Comedy Central, Up Next.

Yang also is known for his posts of "expertly-timed lip-sync videos of famous movie scenes" to Twitter and well-known moments in popular culture, such as a monologue by Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Tyra Banks yelling at contestant Tiffany Richardson on America's Next Top Model, and a viral video of Cardi B talking about the 2019 government shutdown. Each garnered thousands of likes and retweets.

In January 2019, he was named to Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list.

Yang is set to play Nora Lum's (portrayed by Awkwafina) cousin, being raised by her dad (BD Wong) and grandmother (Lori Tan Chinn) in the Comedy Central sitcom Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, picked up in 2018, and set to premiere in January 2020.

Saturday Night Live

As writer: 2018

In 2018, Yang was hired as a staff writer on Saturday Night Live for the show's 44th season. He said he "always loved SNL growing up, but had trouble imagining himself on the show, because he'd never seen people who looked like him associated with the series". Yang is credited with writing on twenty-one episodes of the show for the 2018–2019 season. His writing included: "GP Yass", a play on a vehicle's GPS navigation device that utilizes drag queens to deliver driving directions; and two sketches co-written with Julio Torres, which features Yang's talent for infusing "drama, tension, and exquisite backstory" into an everyday activity like paying bills in "Cheques" with Sandra Oh, and in a pornography scene, "The Actress" with Emma Stone. He also made a cameo appearance during the Sandra Oh/Tame Impala episode as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un while Oh played his translator.

As on-air cast: 2019

In September 2019, Yang was promoted to featured cast member for the 45th season, alongside improviser Chloe Fineman. Yang is the show's first ever Chinese-American cast member, and third openly gay male cast member after Terry Sweeney and John Milhiser.

SNL has had "little representation from Asian actors, as cast members or hosts" over several decades. Up until Yang's promotion there had been only three cast members, and six hosts who were of Asian descent. A 2016 study of SNL revealed: 90% of 1975–2016's show hosts (826 total) were white, 6.8% were black, 1.2% were Hispanic, and 1.1% were labelled "other". Similarly SNL has had comparatively low representation of LGBTQ on-air cast and guest hosts since the series started in 1975. Yang is the third openly gay male, and fifth LGBTQ cast member. News of the Chinese and openly gay Yang's new job was reported internationally, but within hours was overshadowed by revelations that a stand-up comic, Shane Gillis, who had been hired at the same time, aired homophobic and anti-Asian jokes. Gillis issued a non-apology apology, but within days was let go.

Yang premiered on the season's opening show September 28, 2019 with host Woody Harrelson. Notably he was included in the show's cold open playing Kim Jong-un giving advice to Trump on handling the Ukraine controversy including the whistleblower who helped trigger the 2019 impeachment hearings. In other sketches he portrayed Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in a parody town hall debate, and was an extra in a mock movie trailer for Downton Abbey. In October 2019, Yang made his debut on Weekend Update, as Chinese trade representative Chen Biao in a segment about Donald Trump's trade war that was "brief, funny and took some clever satirical shots".

Yang resides in Brooklyn. He is gay.