Bowen Yang seems less than thrilled about what is going on at Saturday Night Live

Last week, Bowen Yang made headlines for appearing to distance himself from Dave Chappelle during the closing moments of Saturday Night Live. Chappelle wasn’t a guest on the show that night but had randomly hopped on the stage from the audience to join the goodnights. We don’t know for a fact that Yang’s displeasure was due to Chappelle’s presence, but video of Yang and Sarah Sherman looking upset and disturbed in the direction where Chappelle was standing led many to assume they were unhappy with the notoriously transphobic comedian’s surprise appearance.

This week, Yang’s feelings about Nikki Haley’s SNL appearance are a bit more clear. Presidential hopeful Haley took part in the show’s cold open in a sketch that sanitized the conservative politician and allowed her to walk back previous comments about the Civil War not being about slavery. Some fans expressed dismay that the Republican candidate (whose policies include being anti-abortion and anti-“critical race theory”) was invited to the show. Yang seems to be among that number: he posted a picture to his Instagram of a note in Haley’s dressing room, which read “Welcome to Studio 8H! From, Lorne + Everyone at SNL.” Yang captioned the photo, “everyone! :)” Though he didn’t come out and say it, the post, which had comments disabled, suggests some resentment to be included among the “everyone” welcoming Haley to the hallowed comedy series. (The A.V. Club has reached out to Yang for comment.)

This series of befuddling events is primed to get all the more upsetting when comic Shane Gillis hosts on February 24. Gillis was hired to be on the show at the same time as Yang and Chloe Fineman but was fired within days of the announcement due to racist and homophobic comments that the show deemed “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable” at the time. Since then, Gillis has managed to build a huge audience through stand-up tours and his popular podcast, and has claimed that the comments that got him fired from SNL were taken out of context.

Except Gillis has continued to make those kinds of comments in the years after being fired, perpetrating COVID skepticism, associating with alt-right figures, and making anti-trans remarks (“No way women wrote the fuckin’ Matrix… and then I googled it and it’s just dudes in wigs,” he said of the Wachowski sisters in a podcast episode in 2023). During an episode of his podcast last year, he entertained a lengthy discussion about Jewish people “controlling the media.” Also in 2023, he appeared as a guest on Sam Hyde and Nick Rochefort’s podcast, nodding and laughing along as one of the hosts appeared to make a rape joke about Kate McKinnon and the other questioned why Lorne Michaels has dual citizenship with the United States and Israel. (Writer Seth Simons compiles more examples of Gillis’ history of racism in his newsletter Humorism.)

Gillis has obviously continued to be offensive and hurtful, but apparently, this has become more acceptable to Saturday Night Live in the intervening years. It’s unfortunate for cast members like Yang, who don’t have any power over the guests who get booked for the show. It’s also unfortunate for fans of Saturday Night Live who are disappointed to see the long-running series embrace figures whose views are upsetting at best, and harmful at worst. But then again, what else is new?