Bowen Yang describes what it was like exiting ‘Saturday Night Live’: ‘I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to’

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — If you thought Bowen Yang was over being emotional about leaving “Saturday Night Live,” you would be mistaken.

The now former “SNL” cast member gave the exit interview we all definitely needed when he talked about his experience on the latest episode of “Las Culturistas,” the podcast he co-hosts with his best friend Matt Rogers.

Rogers began in the episode, titled “Exit Interview (The Cathartic Episode),” by joking that anyone who didn’t know that Yang had left the long-running NBC sketch show after seven and a half years must be living under “not even a rock, a boulder, a big rock.”

Yang said it was “time,” and that prior to the pandemic and the “the current media landscape,” seven years was usually the time most cast members would head off for other pastures.

“In a lot of cases (cast members) don’t have the like, privilege of staying on as long as they would like to,” he said. “I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to.”

“It’s like landing the Mars rover on like a square foot of terrain,” Yang said of his last “SNL” appearance on December 20, which saw him engaging in sketches with the evening’s host – and his “Wicked” costar – Ariana Grande, along with one final sketch that involved the night’s musical guest Cher. “It was like, there were no guarantees about how any of it was gonna shake out.”

Listeners of the podcast also learned some life lessons via Yang on “SNL,” including that “working there is just making peace with the fact that like, things are completely out of your control. Down to the audience response to a joke,” he shared.

“Nothing is guaranteed. Like that is sort of it in a nutshell,” Yang said. “It kind of is perfectly illustrative of what that job is. And it was resonant all the way through to the end. And I feel really – this word is meaningless I think maybe now – but so grateful.”

His cohost disagreed that it was meaningless, given that “there probably were so many times during that experience where you didn’t know if you were going to be able to end the experience of working there with gratitude.”

“So many different people have many different kinds of experiences leaving that show,” Rogers added.

“You come in and there is a shared experience of being at ‘SNL,’ but then ultimately it comes down to, there’s like a collectivism there, but there’s an individualism in terms of like, everyone is on their own journey there,” Yang agreed. “Everyone has a different length of their tenure, completely different struggles.”

But there was clearly a lot of joy too, as Yang talked about the blessing of working on a show where one could go from having an idea early in the week and have it on the air that weekend. Plus the idea of not having to necessarily learn lines, as there were cue cards. All things he said were not transferable experiences to most other TV shows.

Regarding the final sketch where he played a Delta One employee working his last shift, Yang said he cried during the table read the Wednesday prior and admitted that it was “completely self-indulgent” to be able to have the character say goodbye – something other former cast members didn’t get.

He then got emotional recalling how people showed up for him during his final sketch, including his friend and former “SNL” co-cast member Aidy Bryant who left the show in 2022 after a decade, along with many who worked behind the scenes.

“I get on the floor, I look out, and it was like basically everyone who worked there was off the floor showing up,” he said on the podcast, tearfully. “And I just looked out and I thought, I’m so lucky that I ever got to work here. And I’m so lucky that I get to make this little statement that’s barely veiled, where I’m like, ‘I love you all.’”

Yang is not the only longtime cast member who has been reflecting on leaving the legendary show.

Ego Nwodim also recently left after seven seasons, and last weekend talked to E! on the Critics Choice Awards red carpet about it.

“I got to be part of such an incredible ensemble. I learned so much,” she said. “Then, I wanted to take those skills that I learned and cultivated there and see what else I can do.”

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