Bowen Yang On Leaving ‘SNL’ & Criticism He Had “No Range”

Bowen Yang is talking about his Saturday Night Live exit in December and the criticism he received during his tenure on the NBC late-night show.

In the latest episode of his podcast, Yang opened up about his decision to leave the sketch show after seven years.

“The current entertainment ecosystem is so turbulent that people have completely valid reasons for staying longer, or in a lot of cases, don’t have the privilege of staying on as long as they would like to,” he said on Las Culturistas. “I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to.”

He added, “I was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I’m so glad I did.”

Yang’s final SNL episode aired on December 20, with an episode hosted by Ariana Grande featuring musical guest Cher.

During his time on SNL, Yang faced criticisms for his work and addressed claims he had “no range,” saying, “I feel like I was really bogged down the entire time I was there about the idea that there was no range in anything I did.”

The Wicked: For Good actor said he understood the comments, adding, “I knew I was never gonna play the dad. I was never gonna play the generic thing in sketches. It’s a sketch show; Each thing is like four minutes long. It is short and collapsed by necessity, so therefore it plays on archetypes.”

“These archetypes are also in a relationship with generic things, and there is a genericism in whiteness and in being a canvas to build upon,” he continued. “I came in pre-stretched, pre-dyed. People had their over-determinations on what I was, which was: ‘Oh, that’s just the gay Asian guy on SNL.‘ So anytime I would try to work outside of that, it got completely ignored or it still got collapsed to, ‘Oh, he’s being gay and Asian as always.’”