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Bowen Yang looks back on his Saturday Night Live appearance with a smile.
The comedian performed an emotional final skit featuring Ariana Grande and Cher on the Dec. 20 broadcast, ending his contract with SNL after seven seasons on the air.
Yang, a five-time Emmy nominee, joined SNL in 2019, becoming its first Chinese-American cast member and one of its first openly gay stars.
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Three weeks after his last appearance on the show, Yang spoke about his exit on the Wednesday, January 7th edition of the Las Culturistas podcast with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, titled “Exit Interview (Cathartic Episode).”
“Honestly, this is what’s behind it: It’s time. We’ll do seven seasons and then we’ll scoot,” he said.
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“With COVID and the current media environment, the current entertainment ecosystem being so disrupted, people don’t have a perfectly valid reason to stay for an extended period of time or, in many cases, don’t have the privilege of staying as long as they would like,” he continued. “I’m doing such a great thing that I can say I stayed as long as I wanted to.”
Back in April 2025, Yang told PEOPLE that she was sure she would leave the show “at some point,” but that she didn’t yet know “what the vision is.”
“I may have been on the fence about coming back in the summer, but I’m so glad I’m back,” Yang said on the podcast.
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Yang also reflected on the final sketch in which he played the last employee at the Delta One Lounge, and revealed that he wasn’t sure if the segment would air.
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“I was like, ‘There are a million reasons why I get cut. Nothing is guaranteed,'” he recalls. “It was, in a nutshell, a perfect description of what the job was about, and I feel like it resonated right up until the end. And I’m so grateful, even though I may now realize that those words really don’t mean anything.”
