Bowen Yang on how being queer & Asian made him feel liberated on ‘SNL’: “I’m just gonna do what I want”
A post shared by Bowen Yang (@fayedunaway)The fact that there hadn’t been an East Asian person who couldn’t pass as anyone else and be on camera here, that scared the sh*t out of me.
But I think that attitude served me well coming in ‘cause I’m like, ‘I’m never gonna get this, so f*ck it. I’m just gonna do what I want.’I think that’s the right thing to come in here with, just to feel some liberated sense of ‘This is who I am.
Take it or leave it, like, literally take it or leave it.’My point of view will be maybe that of an Asian person or that of a queer person, but also there are just as many things outside of that that have nothing to do with those things.There would be conversations I would have with writers who I felt like were maybe pigeonholing certain things about me, and thankfully that was never met with any toxicity or pushback.
It was always, ‘Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry that happened. It won’t happen again.’What I think has been a nice turning point is being able to joke about those things in a meta way.
