“Get Your Suck Out”: Bowen Yang, in Conversation With Will Ferrell

George Santos, the Chinese spy balloon, Truman Capote, Charli XCX, the iceberg that sank the Titanic, J.D. Vance, Moo Deng. Is there anyone—or anything—that Bowen Yang can’t play? As Saturday Night Live’s resident Swiss Army knife, the 34-year-old performer has vaulted to the top of the comedy institution’s depth chart, a go-to guy when you want your sketch to go viral. All that while hosting his stupidly popular podcast Las Culturistas opposite Matt Rogers, and last year, flying back and forth between New York and London to film his role as Pfannee in the musical adaptation of Wicked—an experience that almost broke him. It’s an insane trajectory for a kid who grew up in a conservative immigrant household—one that, as he tells his fellow SNL alum Will Ferrell, is still hard to wrap his head around.

———

FRIDAY 12:30 PM OCT. 18, 2024, NYC

BOWEN YANG: Bloop, bloop.

WILL FERRELL: Bloop, bloop. [Laughs]

YANG: We’re already laughing. I didn’t do anything.

FERRELL: I’m just laughing that you asked me to do this.

YANG: Is it comical to you, the circumstance?

FERRELL: I just love it so much, but I don’t know if I’ll be a good interviewer.

YANG: I have no doubt you will.

FERRELL: Wait, Bowen, where are you?

YANG: We have a pre-tape studio now at SNL.

FERRELL: Because I was like, “Look at that overhead lighting.” [Laughs]

YANG: They didn’t have a designated spot when you were here, did they?

FERRELL: We would just do them mostly in Seth [Meyers]’s studio.

YANG: That’s funny.

FERRELL: Yeah. That space was totally empty for the longest time. That used to be where they did The [Phil] Donahue Show, and then Rosie [O’Donnell] came along.

YANG: Look out, Phil. Rosie and Oprah wiped him out.

FERRELL: Well, he retired, but you forget how much Rosie dominated there for a while. It was a big deal to go on her show. And in fact, that was one of our biggest shows, when Rosie’s musical guest was Whitney Houston.

YANG: Holy moly.

FERRELL: And it was a Christmas show. I remember it got a 10 overnight rating, which was insane.

YANG: Oh my god. What was your—I don’t mind if I’m just interviewing you, by the way.

FERRELL: I know. You need to stop.

YANG: No, this is what I prefer.

 

FERRELL: [Laughs] But yeah, that was a crazy show. And Molly [Shannon] got both of them to be in a Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch.

YANG: One of our greatest Catholics.

FERRELL: Exactly. So I’m going to start by asking, is it true that you’re fluent in French?

YANG: It’s a half-truth. I grew up in the suburbs of Montreal. I spoke tainted French—all love to my Quebecois—but then we moved to Denver in ’99, and within six months, I forgot all of my French. And then, as a 9-year-old, I got to know every detail of the JonBenét Ramsey case because we moved to Colorado right after it happened. And not to bring this up, but there was also Columbine. So I was convinced as a kid that I was moving to the place where everyone gets killed. Anyway—

FERRELL: [Laughs] That little Bowen’s brain started thinking, “Oh, I have to be funny to make friends here.” But here’s another thing, too. Bowen Yang, that’s your stage name, right? Your real name is Mark Davis. I think everyone needs to know that.

YANG: [Laughs] Will, I don’t know how you arrived at that information. Did you go to the county office?

FERRELL: On my own dime. Interview wouldn’t give me a travel budget. I told them, “Please, I’ll fly coach.” They were like, “Still, no. We don’t do this.” I went to the county. I looked up your birth certificate and found—

YANG: Mark Davis.

FERRELL: Mark Davis was already taken in SAG and AFTRA, right?

YANG: Yeah. I can’t be the 10th Mark Davis on IMDB.

FERRELL: Anyway, SNL last week, for anyone who’s reading this, was the Ariana Grande show, and who would’ve known she’s such a talented sketch player? She’s just lights out—

YANG: Great way to put it.

FERRELL: In everything she does. But the sketch I loved the most was the game-night one.

YANG: You’re just saying that.

FERRELL: I swear, we’ve watched it twice now. The slow build, and the dynamic back and forth, and how cocky you are, but then you have to immediately back off. And then the weird kiss at the end—it’s everything I love, surprising at every turn.

YANG: That’s really nice, Will. There’s something about a living room sketch. I was hanging out with her a couple months ago, and she had just said yes to hosting, and she was so excited.

FERRELL: You guys have gotten to know each other from the movie [Wicked], right?

YANG: In a shocking way. In a way that is so organic and reminds me of you—not to brown-nose too much. I’m just like, “I can’t believe I have this really wonderful professional and personal relationship with Will, someone who I’ve respected and worshipped for so long.” And then it happened two times.

 

FERRELL: I’ve only run into her twice, but she seems suspiciously down-to-earth.

YANG: It’s suspicious. [Laughs] We were hanging out, and she was like, “I have some ideas for the show. We were playing charades the other night with my mom and my brother-in-law’s brother, and he got a little too triumphant about his win. And then my mom just cut him off and was like, ‘You must have a tiny cock or something.’” And then we were like, “Okay, we’re going to write it.” What a perfect, boring beginning to a premise, to have it take place in a very everyday environment. And it was so much fun.

FERRELL: You could tell. She’s so type A and she has her perfect little haircut, and she just explodes right away.

YANG: Right. But I keep going back and forth between how disciplined I should be. Ariana was very precise in terms of her timing and delivery, but I either get hyperfocused or let myself go. Can I nerd out and ask, did you have a certain M.O. when you were at the show?

FERRELL: I don’t know if I can even describe it, only because it was a different set of circumstances. We were all thrown into the pool with a brand-new cast, brand-new writing staff, so we didn’t even have time to think, “What’s my strategy?” You just were like, “Just get up there and go for it.”

YANG: Yeah. But that season was a huge reset for the show.

FERRELL: Let me ask you this. The “Weekend Update” piece with the iceberg, I feel like that was a moment where people were like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to watch this guy Bowen.” Am I accurate in saying that that was the moment where people really started stopping you and going, “That was funny as shit?”

YANG: You know how I knew, Will, is because during air, you emailed me. You were like, “Oh my god, that was so great. You have to do that every week.” I was like, “Well, he doesn’t mean that, because he knows how the show works, but also—”

FERRELL: By the way, I maintain you can do it every week, if you force yourself in there and be like, “The iceberg’s going to comment on this thing,” and keep bringing it back to the point where people are like, “I want to see that.”

YANG: But that’s how I knew that there was something different about it, because you reached out. Whatever else happened after that didn’t matter.

FERRELL: I had to, because there were a few moments when I was there where people reached out in that way, and it meant a lot. Here’s something I was thinking about. From what I’ve read and what we’ve talked about, you had a very conservative upbringing. Were you allowed to watch Saturday Night Live growing up?

YANG: Yeah, weirdly, but it wasn’t until after I moved to the U.S. and kids at school and my sister were like, “You should watch this.” My first memories as a kid were of watching you and Molly [Shannon] and Ana [Gasteyer] and Cheri [Oteri]. That was incredibly formative. It just makes it more surreal that we’re talking about this right now.

FERRELL: And your folks were like, “Why are you watching this dumb show,” or they didn’t care?

YANG: I think they were fine with the idea of me staying in on a weekend. They were like, “At least we know where he is.” But I wasn’t getting cable, so I’d flip the channel between Mad TV and SNL.

FERRELL: And now that you’re on the show and you’re a star, what’s their reaction to that?

YANG: They’ll watch it every week, then they’ll text me. The only criteria for them is if I wear a suit, they go, “You looked so handsome and gentlemanly tonight, and what a great show you had.” I’ll be in one sketch where I have one line, but if I’m wearing a suit, they’ll be like, “It was amazing. You looked wonderful.”

FERRELL: My sweet dad, he would always say, “Wow, you look like Cary Grant. You should push more to do Cary Grant.”

YANG: Why don’t you do a Cary Grant sketch? I feel like we still can.

FERRELL: [Laughs] So then you went to NYU, right? You’re not a theater major.

YANG: No. A chemistry major.

FERRELL: And you stuck with your major the whole four years of college?

YANG: That was a mistake. I don’t think anyone should be impressed by that.

FERRELL: [Laughs] But it’s so fascinating to me. You’re doing all your chemistry stuff, and then you’re doing sketch and improv on the side. You’re obviously going, “This is so much fun. I think this needs to be my life.” But you still have the discipline to finish your degree.

YANG: It was a lot of things. It was wanting to stay on the rails in terms of what a stable life looked like. Like, “This fun thing can only be that, and it cannot be tied to my livelihood or my career.” I don’t fully regret it, because that was a healthy way to approach it, to be like, “This thing that makes me happy should be protected from outside elements.”

FERRELL: I completely identify with it only because my dad was a lifelong musician who had his ups and downs, so I was like, “I’m not going to go into entertainment. I love making my friends laugh, but I’m going to finish my degree,” which was sports journalism. It seemed crazy to ever think I could actually perform.

YANG: I remember researching you growing up and being like, “Will Ferrell didn’t go to theater school?”

FERRELL: No.

YANG: “So maybe there’s hope for me if I want to. It doesn’t need to have this institutional thing behind it.”

FERRELL: So, what was first? Was it an improv club? A class at NYU?

YANG: In Colorado, my calculus teacher was this incredible man named Adrian Holguin, and he was also the epistemology teacher. He taught classes in knowledge. He was also the assistant director at this improv theater in downtown Denver, and there was this little A-team of the really strong actors in the drama club who did the improv troupe. That altered something, because we’d go downtown on Mondays and bomb in front of 30-year-old beer-drinking improvisers and sketch comedians, and they’d be like, “What the hell are these 14-year-old kids doing here on a school night?” And we said that it got our suck out. It was a place to intentionally bomb.

FERRELL: Oh, that’s a good term.

YANG: Yeah, get your suck out. It’s a great age to learn that principle. That’s how I met Matt Rogers, Sudi Green, Anna Drezen. I was so lucky that things aligned that way for me, because I think if one thing was different, there would be some crazy butterfly effect and I’d be a really shaky surgeon in a Canadian hospital or something.

FERRELL: [Laughs] And it’s also kismet that you landed in New York, too, right?

YANG: Definitely. The route was kind of tenuous. What was your story with ending up in L.A.?

FERRELL: Well, I grew up out here, and I saw a show at the Groundlings my senior year at USC, and I saw they had a school with classes. I was like, “Oh, that’s it.” Because I needed a structure. I’m not a great hustler, so that became my place to suck out.

YANG: Interesting.

FERRELL: And I always thought to struggle in L.A. is much easier than to struggle in New York.

YANG: You think so? There’s something about the gravitational pull of just being here that I’m comfortable with.

FERRELL: It didn’t seem as scary. But to pick up and move to New York—

YANG: I mean, thank goodness I met friends through all the comedy groups. It made it easier so that after I graduated college, I could stay and have some kind of support system. But I’m curious when you say that you do well with structure and not necessarily hustling. There’s a big server at SNL that has all the typed-out sketches from every single show, and it’s incredible. And weirdly, it’s the material thing that I’ll miss the most. It’s the access to documented comedy history. We were talking at work one day after a read-through, and we were just like, “I think Ferrell wrote ‘Cowbell’ by himself.”

FERRELL: Yeah.

YANG: We had this discussion about the risks of writing solo as a cast member. People tense up at the table when they see it’s just your piece, but we were like, “You know who did it incredibly well was Will.” And then we read “More Cowbell.”

FERRELL: Well, according to Wikipedia, some playwright in Scotland or Ireland helped me. It’s so random.

YANG: Wait, why? Let’s set the record straight.

FERRELL: Yes. I wrote it by myself, but that was the best part about the Groundlings. If you did UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade] in New York, your improv skills were just off the charts. I still don’t consider myself a very strong improviser, but we were forced to write sketches three to four times a week, so when I got to the show, I was like, “I know how to write for myself.” It took away that anxiety of chasing down a writer, trying to form these alliances.

YANG: Totally. It’s such a weird speed round of The Bachelor on Tuesday night. You’re like, “I got a rose!”

FERRELL: But now, do you feel like you get written for, or is it still a hustle?

YANG: It’s still a hustle. My only sort of “approach” to things at SNL has been to treat every season like it’s my first. I don’t assume that anyone’s going to want to write. I mean, I do have great writing partners and collaborators, but I like to think of it kind of horizontally. We’re all on the same level, and that’s what makes it fun.

FERRELL: I’m sorry if I’m boring you with these questions, but I’m legitimately curious. Okay, so now Wicked.

YANG: Yes?

FERRELL: I’m not familiar with it.

YANG: It’s about these two candle makers.

FERRELL: [Laughs]

YANG: Wick-ed. People mispronounce it all the time.

FERRELL: I’m surprised it’s so popular.

YANG: [Laughs] It’s about one woman’s journey to introduce soy wax to a world that is—

FERRELL: That’s so specific.

YANG: But it’s a fun period piece.

FERRELL: I’m assuming you had a great time doing it. Did you have to go through singing and dancing bootcamp?

YANG: Oh yeah, and still I had a panic attack when the cameras were on me.

FERRELL: Did you do a lot of musical theater ever?

YANG: I was a dilettante my whole life. Even now, I think people assume that I have this in-depth knowledge of Broadway and musicals, but it’s quite surface-level. I feel like I conned my way into this movie, because they gender-flipped my role. I’m like, “Why am I in a scene with Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum?” I still have impostor syndrome.

FERRELL: It never goes away, which I think is a good thing. And then you’re like, “Okay, I’m being ridiculous. I belong here. Wait, do I?” [Laughs] Did you shoot it in New York?

YANG: We shot it in London.

FERRELL: Whoa.

YANG: I was doing Saturday shows and Lorne [Michaels] was like, “You can do it if you don’t miss a show.” And I’m like, “No problem. I have my CBD tinctures to adjust to the jet lag, and I have these great green tea caffeine nootropic gels to wake me up. I’ve got this.” And then I had a mental breakdown. [Laughs] Because I would do shows on Saturday, then fly first thing Sunday morning, land at night in London, then shoot Monday and Tuesday, then fly back Wednesday—

FERRELL: For the read-through.

YANG: And I did that enough times to actually drive me insane. Even though I have no regrets about it, and it’s the honor of my life to do this movie and SNL at the same time, I will never again do the weekly eight-hour round trip. Was there a similar schedule with A Night at the Roxbury or Old School?

FERRELL: No, Old School was during the season. Lorne actually let me miss some shows.

YANG: That’s great. I think it would’ve helped if he let me miss one show. [Laughs] I gotta say, I remember nothing about those shows during that time, so it would’ve made no difference to me if I had missed one or two.

FERRELL: Did you have to sing live?

YANG: I did not, thank Judy Garland’s ghost. I really would’ve done a bad job. But my first trip to New York, I was 13. All I wanted to do was go see Wicked. We couldn’t afford the tickets, so I begged my parents to drive me to the Gershwin Theatre so I could press my face up against the glass. And then that same day, we did the studio tour at 30 Rock, and we sat in the seats at SNL. So it’s all kind of crazy surreal. I saw the movie for the first time last week, and they screened it for SNL people. I wasn’t going to go, but it was great.

FERRELL: I heard half of them walked out though.

YANG: Yeah. They were like, “I thought this was about candles.” [Laughs] Thanks so much for doing this, Will. You were the first person on my list.

FERRELL: I was like, “Done.”

YANG: I love you very much.

FERRELL: I love you too, buddy. Keep killing it. It’s such a pleasure to watch you out there. And as Harper used to tell me, don’t fuck it up.

YANG: Okay.

FERRELL: Those were her words of encouragement to me.

YANG: Wise. I’ll see you soon, I hope.

FERRELL: Okay. Bye, buddy.

———

Hair: John Novotny using Oribe at Opus Beauty.

Makeup: Rommy Najor using MAC Cosmetics at Forward Artists.

Set Design: Sarah Wilson.

Photography Assistants: Maxwell Menzies and Billy Cole.

Fashion Assistants: Alexandra Harris and Akai Littlejohn.

Production Assistant: Jordan Santisteban.

Post-production: Melissa Franco.

Location: 100 Sutton Studios.