Bowen Yang

“I want to have two suitcases full of hair extensions by the time I'm 40.”

“I thought going in that I had to have this very broad, very palatable sensibility that works for everybody, but then the stuff that I'm the most proud of, and probably even got the most success from, was outwardly an expression of queerness or gayness. That's been a nice surprise.”

“The way I see queerness now is that, best case scenario, another queer person reflects it back at you. Worst case scenario, which is what happened to me, is having people say, Well, you like Michelle Branch, so you must be gay.'”

“I find the expectation that a public figure - who is known for something besides, like, having a political thought, someone who puts on wigs for a living - would have something complex to say about any number of things, to be so aligned with a certain value system, is a little bit flawed. It's like, why would you think that?”

“No, broadly speaking there is no average age in comedy, which is very refreshing. Any stress over success vis-a-vis age in comedy is just a matter of giving up short-term gains in favor of the long haul.”

“I feel like doing Las Culturistas' for an extended period of time has taught me where to put the fulcrum on having structure and having looseness.”

“I was going through this identity crisis of being like, 'I don't think I want to be a doctor anymore.' And, 'oh my god, have I made a huge mistake? What do I do?'”

“Pride for me has always been about holding a personal vigil within your own relationship, with nuclear being under the queer umbrella or being an ally wherever you land.”

“I loved 'Grey's Anatomy.'”

“Getting a TV in my bedroom was something that I decided to do five months into the pandemic because I was finally, like, You know what? I might as well make my apartment feel like a hotel room.”

“I was the kid who at 12 years old went to NBC studio tours, and I would just answer all these trivia questions on the tour that the pages would ask about 'SNL'. I was that kid.”

“Well, you know, the best compliment I've ever gotten from a coworker is Anna Drezen, who is a longtime friend of mine from college, which she was like - one day she turned to me and she said, you know, Bowen, you make video games seem accessible or you make it seem - you make them seem less esoteric or whatever she said.”

“I used to be very anti-bath.”

“Gosh, my own podcast, Las Culturistas,' is so unstructured and loose. There's no preparation that goes into it. It's just about plugging in and playing.”

“It's not to say that, like, my sensibility is being sort of policed in any way. It's just I am trained at SNL' to think about the general audience. That's a unique aspect of SNL' - that everyone has an opinion on it from every generation.”

“I'm just a comedian. I don't have all the answers. But I'm not just looking for them online. I'm looking around me.”

“I'm absolutely looking at my career differently, but it's still really important to some sense of connection to where I came from, which is this DIY, queer work ethic and sensibility.”

“I think as queer people, we were very used to accommodating.”

“I texted one of the writers I said, 'I have this crazy idea, I think I have to play Fran Lebowitz on Update.' The next day, Anna Drezen, our head writer, texted me, 'Crazy idea, but I think you should play Fran Lebowitz on Update.'”

“When I watched The Outs,' I was like, 'Oh my god, this is just such a great, grounded, lived-in story about people my age living where I happen to live.'”