Bowen Yang plans to leave “Saturday Night Live,” a stunning midseason exit announcement for one of the show’s biggest stars, its first Chinese American cast member, and one of its first out gay performers.
The actor and comedian made a farewell post on Instagram Saturday morning, after entertainment outlets reported that his last show would be this weekend’s, hosted by Yang’s fellow “Wicked” cast member Ariana Grande with musical guest Cher.
“i loved working at SNL, and most of all i loved the people. i was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwhile,” he wrote. “i’m grateful for every minute of my time there. i learned about myself (bad with wigs). i learned about others (generous, vulnerable, hot). i learned that human error can be nothing but correct. i learned that comedy is mostly logistics and that it will usually fail until it doesn’t, which is the besssst.”
Heading into the SNL’s 51st season — which saw a wave of departures including Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner — Yang told People magazine he decided to stay on the sketch series at least in part because of encouragement from the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels.
“I’ve always gone by the instinct of, do I have more to do? And I feel like I do,” Yang said. “Lorne was like, ‘You have more to do.’
“I was like, ‘I feel the audience is maybe getting sick of me,’ Yang added, according to People. “And he was like, ‘That’s not true.’”
Yang joined SNL as a writer in 2018, and was added to the cast the next year as SNL’s first Chinese American cast member. (Rob Schneider, whose mother was Filipino, was the first Asian member.)
He impersonated Kim Jong Un and Andrew Yang in his SNL debut, performing with the show’s first Asian Canadian host, Sandra Oh. Throughout his seven, almost eight, seasons on the show, he memorably portrayed George Santos, the “Titanic” iceberg and the viral baby hippo Moo Deng.
As one of the show’s first out LGBTQ+ cast members, he was also featured in skits about queer culture, or lack thereof: In the sketch “Bowen’s Straight,” Yang pretends to be a straight man who pretends to be gay “because it’s a short cut to laughs.” Yang once told NPR he thought they’d never hire “an effeminate Asian man” for that show.
He has earned five Emmy nominations for his work on SNL, the first in 2019 for his writing and four more nods for outstanding supporting actor. Yang has also seen his broader entertainment career flourish since joining the show. He played Pfannee, one of Glinda’s friends, in the 2024 hit “Wicked” and its sequel this year. Yang spoke candidly about the toll his demanding filming schedule took on him — shooting “Wicked” in London and “Saturday Night Live” at 30 Rock.
“I was doing Saturday shows and Lorne [Michaels] was like, ‘You can do it if you don’t miss a show.’ And I’m like, ‘No problem. I have my CBD tinctures to adjust to the jet lag, and I have these great green tea caffeine nootropic gels to wake me up. I’ve got this.’ And then I had a mental breakdown,” he told Will Ferrell for Interview magazine. “Because I would do shows on Saturday, then fly first thing Sunday morning, land at night in London, then shoot Monday and Tuesday, then fly back Wednesday.”
Outside of SNL and “Wicked,” Yang also co-hosts “Las Culturistas,” the award-winning pop culture podcast with Matt Rogers. He starred in the 2022 gay romantic comedy “Bros” alongside Billy Eichner, and in the Emmy-nominated film “Fire Island,” a Joel Kim Booster-written, LGBTQ-themed adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.” And he played God in the 2023 gay comedy “Dicks: The Musical.”
Yang is not the first cast member to leave in the middle of a season, but the practice is uncommon. Cecily Strong was the last member to leave midway, in 2022, among other notable surprise exits, including Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers.
Representatives for Yang didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Saturday’s episode of SNL airs at 11:30 p.m. on NBC and will be available to stream on Peacock the next day.
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