Bowen Yang calls “Saturday Night Live” the 'cringiest' job: 'People constantly tell you how much it sucks'
"Cringe mountain is 'SNL.'"
Bowen Yang isn’t holding back about the reality of working at Saturday Night Live.
On the latest episode of the Las Culturistas podcast, Yang and his cohost Matt Rogers reflected on Joe Biden dropping out of the U.S. presidential race and the importance of casting out feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment in order to achieve one’s goals.
“You have to sometimes climb up a huge hill of cringe,” Rogers explained, “and once you can scale that hill — which is, you know, it might be your judgement of yourself, on what you’re doing, it might be everyone saying what you’re doing is cringe — on the other end, you slide down into happiness and nirvana.”
It’s a feeling that Yang, who was hired at SNL in 2018, understands completely. “Bitch, I know about working through cringe, climbing a cringe mountain, I work at Saturday f---ing Night Live, the cringiest thing in show business on every level,” he replied. “Cringe mountain is SNL.”
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Bowen Yang on 'Saturday Night Live'He continued, “Eternally grateful that I work there, will be the defining thing of my life and career, and yet it is a cringe mountain because to live through working at SNL and to have people constantly tell you how much it sucks, how bad it is, how it’s not as good as it used to be, for your career — that has to do something to you psychologically where you emerge and go, ‘I don’t give a f---.’”
When Rogers began to share his thoughts on the general reaction to the series, Yang interrupted to add, “It’s a cringey job!”
Rogers, however, wasn't fully onboard with his co-host's assessment. “I don’t think it’s cringe,” he admitted, “but I will say… everyone has a f---ing opinion. It’s the most popular show in the world, it’s now been on for 50 years, it is Capital C commercial culture, and therefore it’s cringe because everyone is like, ‘I’m having something to say.’”
Related: Bowen Yang says he's 'still a little straight' from SNL sketch with Sydney Sweeney and Gina Gershon
Yang agreed that people often share their takes about SNL because it’s both “comedy and it’s subjective.” Rogers added, “And it’s corporate, you know what I mean? It’s all those things.”
Still, Rogers managed to find a silver lining in the never-ending series slander. “But on the other side of it, guess what Bowen: you get to actually, the visceral thing of people laugh, people feel good,” he pointed out. “And that is why we’re doing this and that is why America is worth saving.”
Listen to Yang and Rogers share their thoughts on SNL in the podcast above.
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