Bowen Yang has learned a lot about Saturday Night Live over the course of his five seasons in the cast. But one of his more recent revelations is that the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels knows SNL works best as a “reality show.”
As Yang explained on the latest episode of former SNL cast members Dana Carvey and David Spade’s podcast Fly on the Wall, a “meta-narrative” surrounds the show that Yang keeps finding himself caught up in. It happened when he casually mentioned an unnamed host that made multiple cast members cry on Watch What Happens Live last month. And he’s likely done it again now by sharing behind-the-scenes details about Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney’s hosting debut this past March.
“I get caught up in the meta-narrative sometimes,” Yang said. “I’ll get roped into like a headline or some pickup every now and then I’m like, oh god, this is so unfair, this is so stressful, this is not what I meant. Or this is not what I was doing while, like, [Dave] Chappelle was standing on stage with me.”
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But Lorne Michaels understands, Yang said, that “this is what the show is now,” adding, “I think Lorne has an awareness of it. I think Lorne knows that it’s a reality show.”
This brought the conversation around to Sweeney’s episode, which received public backlash for relying to heavily on her body for jokes. But Yang, who appeared in a Hooters sketch with Sweeney, said that the actress was “an example of a host who came in and understood how she was being consumed and perceived already.”
“She came in and was like, ‘Please, everyone, make jokes about my boobs,’” he revealed. “She was practically begging everybody.”
Sweeney herself previously told GQ that she deliberately wanted to address the way people see her. “There’s so many people out there who are like, ‘Oh, she’s famous because she showed her boobs,’” she said, indicating that she was in on the joke.
Yang went on to say that when he wanted to make sure Sweeney was comfortable for a sketch where they had to make out, the actress dismissed any concerns by replying, “Bowen, I’m on Euphoria.”
“But then she also said, ‘You’re living every gay man’s dream by ‘having sex’ with me,’” he added. “She knows that she is so raw sexual power that anyone would be thrilled to simulate sex with her. It’s so crazy.”
Despite being asked directly by Carvey and Spade, Yang declined to reveal the now infamous mean host he had previous called out: “I’ll tell you guys off-mic.”
But he did say that the apparent tears shed by cast members may have had as much to do with the stressful “environment” of SNL as it did with the host in question. “Imagine you stay up until 4 a.m. writing a sketch and then the host is like, ‘I fucking hate this,’” Yang said, “your nerves are frayed, you’re going to have some weird, bizarre emotional response.”
Then, just to be clear, Yang added, “I’m not saying I was the one who cried.”
