Bowen Yang loves that SNL sometimes feels like it was written during a "gas leak"
The Wicked actor also shared his early picks for meme and album of the year during his recent visit to Hot Ones.
Photo: First We Feast/Hot Ones
No episode of Hot Ones will ever be as meta as the one featuring Amelia Dimoldenberg—the host of the other chicken-based interview show—as a guest, but Bowen Yang’s is pretty close. SNL (which Yang has been a part of since 2018) has parodied host Sean Evans and his fiery gauntlet not once but twice, both times featuring Maya Rudolph as a very sweaty Beyoncé. “It felt like the perfect sort of comedy math, where it’s like, ‘Oh, this person who is so composed and so unflappable in her interviews, put her in the most flappable place,” Yang said of the inspiration behind the sketches. Evans also got to compliment Mikey Day’s impression of him (“If you get parodied on Saturday Night Live, that’s a win!”) and do a little Rudolph impression of his own: “There is no way in fu-uck I’m ever eating those wings,” she apparently told him, vowel separation and all. Oh well.
But while Hot Ones is indeed a flappable place, Yang thrives in that sort of chaos—both in the business of eating chicken wings and writing jokes. “I just want to tell people sometimes, ‘Guys, it’s sketch comedy. It doesn’t have to be life-changing. It just has to make you chuckle,'” he shared. “This is an idea that someone stayed up ’til 4 a.m. to write. This will have the feel of something that was written during a gas leak. It will feel crazy. So that’s what I love about it!”
Some other things Yang loved this year include: Moo Deng, the Jennifer Lawrence “what do you mean” gif (from Hot Ones!) even though that was technically from last year, Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess (ditto), Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard And Soft, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter even though he wishes she did “one TV performance (he’s in luck!) or put out one visual” for it, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short And Sweet, and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine, though Ariana slightly edges out Sabrina. (That might have something to do with the Wicked co-stars’ friendship.) Next year, Yang should give himself a Las Culturistas Culture Award for his own Hot Ones nominee tease.