Bowen Yang is having a hard time adjusting to life after “Saturday Night Live.”
On Thursday’s episode of the podcast “Therapuss,” host Jake Shane asked the comedian how he was doing after leaving the NBC sketch comedy show midway through the season last year.
“It’s strange. I feel like I’m being chopped up and applauded…This town is over,” said Yang, 35.
The “Wicked” star asserted that he was “of course” ready to leave “SNL,” but admitted he was “constantly recalibrating.”
“I think we’ll be in that mode for a while, and that’s okay, you know what I mean?” he said.
In December 2025, Yan announced that he would be leaving the show after joining the Lorne Michaels-produced show ahead of season 45 in 2019.
“I loved working at SNL, and most of all I loved the people. I was there at a time when so many things in the world started to seem pointless, but working on 30 Rock taught me the value of showing up anyway if people thought it was worth it,” he wrote on Instagram at the time.
Sources told the Post that Yang’s departure was “sudden” but “not surprising.”
Yang originally wanted to leave “SNL” after Season 50 ended in May 2025. However, the 81-year-old revealed that Michaels and the network convinced him to stay longer.
“He was like, ‘Listen, you should come back,'” the “Fire Island” star said earlier this month when he spoke with Rachel Sennott on Variety’s “Actors on Actors.”
Yang noted that TV producers wanted comedians to mentor the newest cast members hired for season 51.
“‘There’s a lot of new kids…a lot of people leaving, a lot of people coming in,'” Yan recalled Michaels allegedly saying at the time. “‘At least for the first half of the season, you should be there to set an example for them. I’m telling you, it’s going to be very important.”
Yang said that in her conversation with Michaels, “[He]made me think, ‘I need you,’ and for the first time, I felt like someone was making so many things possible.”
Several major cast members left SNL after its 50th season, including Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker, and Emir Wakim.
