Bowen Yang may have preferred facing Wicked‘s winged monkeys to the wings of death he tackled on Hot Ones.
The SNL star took the expansive Wicked promotional tour to the spicy wing-eating gauntlet/interview show and revealed just how he blew his first interview with another intimidating force, Lorne Michaels.
“I had screen tested in 2017, the final step in that process is that you have a one-on-one meeting with Lorne,” Yang explained to host Sean Evans. “The first thing out of my mouth was ‘I’m Canadian too, I grew up in Montreal, I grew up in Quebec.’ And immediately, it was done. It was a vibe killer.”
It turns out that Michaels doesn’t have a lot of love for sweaty Canadian glad-handing.
“I didn’t get the job because I had pandered to his Canadianness and it was a disaster,” Yang lamented, only growing more awkward as Michaels asked if Yang spoke French and the comedian explained that he used to, but not anymore.
Yang got a second chance though, beginning at SNL as a writer before being promoted to a full cast member position in his second season with the show.
“Aidy Bryant was the one who told me, you can be like friends with him now,” Yang added. “I think Lorne at one point was hanging out with Aidy and was like…’I think Bowen sees me as like a mountain to climb, and I don’t want him to think that anymore.'”
Bryant telling that story helped Yang learn how to talk to Lorne, he explained, approaching Michaels and relating to him on a human level—as surprising as that may seem, based on some stories of the SNL creator.
Yang also shared how he pitched the popular “Bowen’s Straight” sketch to Sydney Sweeney, which features the actress engaging in a steamy makeout session and light sex scene with Yang.
“I just remember being like, ‘We’re going to need an intimacy coordinator for this, and it’s going to be completely up to your comfort,'” Yang shared.
But Sweeney cut off his apprehension at the pass, delivering his favorite reaction he’s received from a guest host to one of his pitches.
“She was like, ‘Bowen, I’m on Euphoria—like, it’s not going to be anything,'” a relieved Yang explained.
He also walked Evans through the comedy structure of SNL‘s Hot Ones sketches, featuring Maya Rudolph as Beyoncé.
“It felt like the perfect 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 explained, adding that he hoped Evans was all right with Mikey Day’s impression of him.
Evans called it a win, delighting in the fact that someone from SNL had to source an Evans-styled outfit. Yang explained how the hair and makeup departments print out images of anyone who’s being played on the show in the quick-change booth, though the bald Evans quipped that hair for him is pretty easy.
“It’s gorgeous to watch the departments come together and work backward from the look,” Yang added. “They’ll be like, ‘OK, I guess we’ve got to get a tech hoodie and joggers,’ the Sean Evans get-up—or a really nice flannel. And that’s a really fun puzzle-solving that happens on the show, all the time.”
Evans shared his own SNL story with Yang, explaining how he’d been on Rudolph’s Loot in a faux version of Hot Ones. But when he asked her to come on the show when the Loot episode aired, Rudolph quickly shut him down.
“I’ll never forget this,” Evans said. “She goes, ‘Sean, I’ll sit down with you and talk about whatever—there is no way in f*h-*ck I’m ever eating those wings.”
The SNL cast member pointed out that Evans’ prolonged F word incorporated “the Maya Rudolph vowel separation.”
Yang discussed numerous other topics, including his favorite memes. They include the creature that prompted one of the highly culturally aware cast member’s “Weekend Update” desk bits—playing viral baby hippo Moo Deng.
You can watch Bowen Yang’s full Hot Ones appearance, and see how he handles that wing heat, in the video above.
