Saturday is typically an all-hands-on-deck rehearsal day at Saturday Night Live, with the cast and crew spending hours preparing for the 11:30 p.m. broadcast. But this weekend, one of the show’s special guests had somewhere else to be.
Bowen Yang, who made his surprise return to SNL in two sketches Saturday night, spent the day on Broadway, where he’s currently starring in Oh, Mary! With two performances scheduled, Yang wasn’t available for the day’s rehearsals—including the all-important 8 p.m. dress rehearsal.
So how did SNL rehearse two sketches without one of its performers? With a pair of substitutes, a little creative scheduling, and a giant sign that read “BOWEN YANG.”
Before dress rehearsal began, Marcello Hernández warned the studio audience during his pre-show warmup that Sarah Sherman would be filling in for someone during the cold open.
That someone turned out to be Yang, who was slated to make his first SNL appearance since leaving the show last December, playing disgraced former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Sherman took his place at dress rehearsal, wearing an oversized sign identifying her as “BOWEN YANG.”
Yang also had a role in host John Mulaney‘s latest New York-themed musical sketch, which presented another challenge. For that number, first-year cast member Saidah Belo-Osagie filled in for Yang, playing two roles during the rehearsal.
While Yang missed Saturday’s rehearsals, he wasn’t entirely absent from the preparation process. LateNighter understands that he was at Studio 8H after Friday night’s performance of Oh, Mary! to rehearse his parts.
Yang didn’t miss any Broadway performances to accommodate his SNL return. He appeared in both of Saturday’s scheduled performances of Oh, Mary!, at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., with the latter overlapping with SNL‘s dress rehearsal.
By the time SNL went live at 11:30 p.m., Yang was back in place, appearing as Huang in the show’s cold open, which featured Mulaney as a CIA official attempting to teach a group of tech billionaires how to recognize a potential spy.
Later in the broadcast, Yang popped up in Mulaney’s eighth New York musical, playing Mary Todd Lincoln—the same character he’s currently portraying on Broadway in Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary!. Dressed in his Broadway costume, Yang performed a parody of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls, reimagined as a warning about traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel.
And his busy weekend isn’t over yet. After performing twice on Broadway Saturday and appearing twice on SNL that night, Yang is scheduled for two more performances of Oh, Mary! Sunday, at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
