After more than five years as a Saturday Night Live cast member, Bowen Yang has had the opportunity to work with a variety of A-list actors, pop stars and even athletes.
Still, Bowen says there’s at least one person who stands out for all the wrong reasons.
Appearing on Watch What Happens Live on Sunday, the comic was asked to recall the worst behavior he’s experienced from an SNL host, without naming names – and he had a very specific response despite that constraint.
“This man who... this person, this host made multiple cast members cry on Wednesday during the, before the table-read, because he hated the ideas,” he said. “Terrible.”
Watch a clip of Bowen Yang’s Watch What Happens Live chat below:
Elsewhere in the interview, Bowen described another less-than-desirable moment from his SNL tenure ― specifically, a sketch co-starring The Bear actor Ayo Edebiri that didn’t go according to plan because of shifting circumstances.
“We wrote a live sketch where it took place in an elevator, and she and I were, like, telling everyone that we should all make out or something because the elevator got stuck,” he explained.
“Then, for some reason, it got turned into a pre-tape under our noses, and we had to adapt to that.”
“It just didn’t go as well as I had hoped, and you just deal with it,” he continued.
“Comedy’s subjective; you never know how it’s gonna play in front of a specific audience. But it’s fine, you let it roll off your back.”
While Bowen kept the identity of the problematic guest host a secret, other SNL cast members have not been so diplomatic when it comes to behind-the-scenes chatter.
Appearing on The Howard Stern Show in 2018, Pete Davidson put fellow SNL veteran Chevy Chase on blast, deeming the National Lampoon’s Vacation star a “genuinely bad, racist person”.
Four years later, Chevy Chase shrugged off the criticism.
The 50th season of Saturday Night Live premieres next month, with cast alum Maya Rudolph set to return as Kamala Harris during the final weeks of the 2024 presidential race.
Bowen, meanwhile, will be seen alongside Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the forthcoming movie adaptation of the musical Wicked, due out in November.