Bowen Yang has had some iconic Saturday Night Live roles — the iceberg that sank the Titanic, the Chinese spy balloon, the Tiny Desk intern. And he's also had big successes outside SNL — in movies like Fire Island and Bros, and on his hit podcast, Las Culturistas. He talks to Rachel about living too much in the present, hard truths from Tina Fey and why the afterlife should have a rollercoaster.
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Wild Card with Rachel Martin
Bowen Yang thinks being present is overrated
This message comes from NPR's sponsor, LiveRight, publishers of Daniel Handler, AKA Lemony Snicket's memoir, and then, and then, what else? The literary icon delivers stories from childhood, advice for writers, and tributes to the works of Art that inspired him, available now. How do you get in your own way? Hmm. I get in my own way by, like, over privileging the present. That's so interesting because everyone wants to be in the present. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that's overrated. I feel like being present is overrated. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random, from a deck of cards. Pick a card one through three, questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them. Not that I'm, like, permanently camped out at the present, but I do forget about the past. I forget that I have, like, been through tough things before. So, I gotta tell you, I take research very seriously. My team and I spend hours digging through articles and profiles of our guests, trying to understand them, right? This is serious work, and of course, this is what I did to prepare for my conversation with Bowen Yang. I knew a lot about him already, though, like the fact that he's the first Chinese-American cast member on Saturday Night Live. I know the Inside Jokes from his podcast, Las Culturistas, which he hosts with his best friend, Matt Rogers, but I also have to cop to the fact that the research for this interview was just a good time, because I had an excuse to watch a lot of SNL clips. The iceberg that sank the Titanic, the Chinese spy balloon, the tiny desk intern, Bowen Yang Classics, all. But as much as I love him on us now, it was the 2022 rom-com Fire Island that made me fall in love with Bowen Yang. He turned what could have been a light and easy role as the best friend who never gets the guy into something heartbreakingly real and joyful. So, it is my very great pleasure to welcome Bowen Yang to our show. Bowen, thank you for being here. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for having me. The less you read, the better, so I'm glad you didn't do so much research. Perfect, and I read the perfect amount. Okay. But really, I'm so glad you're here. I've been waiting to get to talk to you for a long time, so I'm glad we get to do it in the format of this crazy game. Yes, me too. So... I'm nervous. Okay, don't be nervous, don't be nervous, because we're going to ease our way into this. So, what happens when one lands their dream job, because SNL had been a thing that you quite literally had dreamed about doing for a very long time when you were growing up, and it was a thing that you saw and thought, "I don't know. No, I couldn't, but wouldn't it be cool if I could?" I think I was leaning more in the "I couldn't" notion of it. Like, it was a thing where, I mean, blah, blah, blah, representation matters, but also, like, when my manager at the time was like, "SNL's looking for tapes. If you want to send in five minutes of characters and impressions, go for it." I was like, "Yeah, I'll do it on a lark, because there's no way they're ever going to hire for camera, this effeminate Asian man." And I was just throwing everything against the wall being like, "This is for me, this is not for them, I don't think this will be seen." Yeah, 'cause you just commit yourself, you have nothing to lose, so you might as well put it all out there. Exactly. And then once I landed it, it was just about seeing what I could probably get away with, because I was like, "I think I infiltrated the system here somehow, but it's always been the best. I mean, I will cherish this time forever." How do you feel about playing the game? Let's do it. So, I'm going to tell you a little bit how this works, though. I've got a deck of cards in front of me. Each one has a question on it. I'm going to hold up three cards at a time, and you are going to choose one at random to answer. There are two rules. You get one skip. If you use your skip, I'm going to swap in another question from the deck. You get one flip, so you can put me on the spot and ask me to answer one of the questions before you do. We're breaking it up into three rounds, memories, insights, and beliefs with a few questions in each round. And because this is a game, there's a prize when we get to the end. Are you ready, Boneyang? I think I am ready, which is enough. It's all going to be fine. Round one, memories. In this round, we're looking back at things that have shaped you, people experiences. Three cards in front of me, you pick one, two, or three. I'm going to go with three. This one. What was a moment when you felt proud of yourself as a kid? Oh, wow. I have such an immediate answer. See, my fear coming into this was that I would be stumped and that I would have to rummage through my entire-- I mean, we might get to that point. We might get to that point. No, thank goodness. I remember in the first grade, or year one, as we called it in Canada, I was in Montreal at the time. And then there was just a class one day in school where we drew-- I had pastels and then there was unstructured, like, drawing time, right? First grade classic, classic stuff. I drew a clown with blue hair, a flower in his shirt, standing outside the circus, and then there was a speech bubble on the clown, and he was saying, "Hello, your French Quebecois greeting, hello." Pretty simple stuff, right? Yeah. But apparently, the teacher at the time thought it was so sophisticated that she, like, submitted it to this art contest, and then I won a full 20 Canadian dollars. And it was the first-- I think it was a pretty vital moment of, like, creative validation for me growing up. Yes, totally. And my parents were very excited. And I got 20 bucks. Did your parents think you were going to be an artist? Or you just moved on from that? No, they really pushed that. And for some reason, art was, like, acceptable creative outlets for an Asian child of immigrants. It was the high arts. The high arts. It was the high arts. And so, I think they were very confused when I pivoted years later to improv comedy and, like, telling jokes on stage because they were, like, this is completely crude. What happened to, you know, you're like-- You're pretty clown pastel. You're pretty clown pastel. And I was okay at the violin. Like, I really hit all my Asian child marks growing up in the US, and somehow I landed on comedy. Yeah. I think it was a good bit. Just saying that I think it all worked out the way it was supposed to. Okay. Moving on. Okay. So, people in memories, new cards, one, two, three. Okay, great. Maybe let's switch over to one. Let's switch to one, shall we? Let's see. What's happening over here? Let's see. What was a moment in your life when you could have chosen a different path? Oh, I went to school at NYU, and the pathway was going to be-- you're going to major in chemistry. You're going to take your MCAT. You're going to go to med school. And the comedy stuff is sort of like being relegated to a hobby. That was my way of sort of putting a lid on things until the top kind of just blew off right as I graduated college. I remember commencement being with a lot of students who were just so excited about the next thing, and I felt none of that. And then I retook my MCAT, I took it twice. And so I remember being in the testing center, at a computer, and I just remember an interview with Steve Carell where he said he was going to apply to law school. And then once he got to either the written portion of the LSAT or something on his law school application that he just realized he couldn't do it, and then that moment that interview flashed before me in the testing center, and then I was like, "I can't do this." Walked over to the proctor, said, "I'm going to avoid my tests. Thank you very much." And I think he was pretty perplexed because we were well into hour four of the test. You just sat through four hours. He was like, "It took you this long to realize? I know." He was like, "You might as well just like, like, close it up, whatever." And I remember calling my parents outside, telling them what had happened. I was fearing the worst. I was fearing them just completely confounded. Yeah. And they were pretty delicate with me. I'm glad. Yeah. Yeah. But that was a moment. You know, like the door slid, like it was like it could have really gone one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah. You could be a heart surgeon right now or a bad heart surgeon. I hope in the other life you're a good one. Yeah. Well, a heart surgeon who's, so to speak, heart wasn't in it, you know? Right. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Bowen talks about the advice that Tina Fey gave him that he feels a little bit conflicted about. This message comes from Apple Card, "Reboot your credit card with Apple Card. It has no fees and gives you up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase. Apply for Apple Card now in the Wallet app on iPhone." Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch, subject to credit approval. APRs for Apple Card range from 19.24% to 29.49% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of February 1st, 2024, terms and more at applecard.com. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Carvana, with thousands of options under $20,000 plus customizable financing terms and down payments as low as $0 down. It's easy to find a car that fits your lifestyle. Visit Carvana.com or download the app today. Terms and conditions may apply. "When the economic news gets to be a bit much…" Listen to the indicator from Planet Money. We're here for you, like your friends trying to figure out all the most confusing parts. One story, one idea, every day, all in 10 minutes or less. The indicator from Planet Money, your friendly economic sidekick. From NPR. You have passed through round one. We are now in round two, okay? In this round, we're focused on insights, so this is stuff that you're working on now. Observations you've made about yourself, what you're learning. Three new cards. Oh, and different colors. Yes. Round two is blue. Very good. One, two, or three. Two, two. Two. I don't know why two always makes me want to say what that does. It's nice. Mmm. What's a quality you're drawn to that you don't possess? Oh, can I flip it? Can I ask you that? Sure. Sure you can. In general, I like people who are connectors of other people. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. People who derives a lot of self-worth from bringing other people together and like matchmaking that way and like having great dinner parties and seeing what relationships pop up from that. I am so not that person. Like, dinner parties make me tired and I like the people who know me well know that I'm always going to be the first to leave and so I really am drawn to people who are really good at socializing. Like, and I mean not genuinely, not like, oh, they're really good at making small talk. I mean, really good at cultivating relationships and bringing other people together and it's such a lovely thing and I wish and I've really done a lot of like is it because I'm really self-centered and I just need everything to be my way all the time. I mean, maybe but I'm really drawn to people who just seemed like they just have boundless like so much bandwidth for a lot of people in their life. Sure. It's so interesting because I have that same thought where I'm like, oh, am I? Does this make me like a selfish person if my social battery drains a little bit faster than most others? And like, why is that like the counter like reality to that? I know. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. I don't think it is. Yeah. But you still have to answer the question. Okay, fine, fine, fine. What is a quality that you maybe you like see it in a bunch of your friends but you know that it's not like a thing you have in spades. Sure, the joke answer is I wish I could be the person who opens up any fridge or pantry and is like, okay, I know I'm going to make for dinner like that. Isn't that such a superpower? That's a real answer. It's a total superpower. Is that a real answer? Well, if you have a second answer, say more about that. I'll give you a second answer but for the first answer, it's like, you know, if you're like with friends staying in like a vacation situation, like a group house or a excited about that idea and then be like the act of opening up a fridge or a pantry looking at what's there and then like improvising in the kitchen, like that is so, so so foreign to me. They're like anchovy paste and tomatoes and cheddar cheese. Delicious. Delicious. It's going to be lasagna somehow. You're like, what? How did you come up with that? Okay, so that's the more frivolous answer. Okay. The other one, I think it is this ability that people have that I don't wear. They can like think in this very collectivist way. I feel like I am very individualized and I think about my needs in a way that is like totally okay. It's not a problem. It's the way that like the human brain has evolved, which is to make rapid assessments and decisions and not to patiently think about something. That's just not something that like we ever had to do to survive. And that's something that I think everyone struggles with, but some people just seem to have like an easier way to tap into that to like think of like the meta and I feel like I think pretty small skill, which I think is okay. Like I go to work and it never occurs to me that like millions of people are watching what I'm doing. I think that you have to be that way, right? Like you can't be the other way. Right. I always lose your mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, not that you need my validation, but I think your brain is good. I think you think of things. I don't know. I want you to do that. Only therapist. I just know my brain is good. Okay. We're moving to the next question, three more cards, one, two, three. Let's go with three. How do you get in your own way? Oh, hmm. How do I get in my own way? I get in my own way by like over privileging the present. I don't ever refer. That's not interesting because everyone wants to be in the present. Right. Like that's the thing. Everyone's like, oh, I just got to be in the present all the time. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that's overrated. I feel like being present is overrated. Not that I'm like constantly there, not that I'm like permanently camped out at the present, but I do like, I forget about the past. I forget that I have like been through tough things before. I guess I need to pair like being in the present with like acknowledging like the totality of the past. May I gently nudge in that direction because you have been through hard things, you know? And just being a gay man in America is a thing. And I can imagine that there are things that it would be easier to just not erase them from your memory, but you say you overprivileged the present, but if you overprivileged the past, then that could occupy too much of your space to a point of paralysis. Maybe you're saying things that I'm projecting on you, but no, no, that's totally right because I think I just, I think this is just what we do in terms of compartmentalizing is we just cordon off. Not bad boy up. Exactly. But I think like, let's just like dangle the keys in front of us and be like, oh, right, let's like open up the file and let's go through the cabinet. I think I, I don't do that enough. And that is what kind of hampers me a bit. Yeah. Yeah. I think what you're saying is that you want to have more of a balance. Yeah. And maybe there's some stuff worth taking from the file cabinet of your past that doesn't have to be triggering, but it can enrich your present. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, God, I must have, I think I, I lost the threat on that metaphor for a second with the filing cabinet. But thank you for making sense of it. I don't know. Okay. We are moving on three new cards. Okay. Last question in this round. One, two, three. Let's go with one. What have you learned to be careful about? Oh, this is like really something that I've dwelled on for the past. Oh, two, three months. Tina Fey came on my podcast and she, in a very playful, so brilliant way was really against me for sharing my real opinions on movies on the podcast and just my real opinions in general. So sometimes I use my podcast as a diary and I'm like, oh, this is what happened to me today. And if I go back and listen to it now, I'm like, wait, why did I have to bring that up? But basically what Tina was saying was this is something, this is a permanent record. It's like that thing of like the Internet is written in permanent marker. And she was saying the phrase that kind of like went a little viral from that was her saying authenticity is dangerous and expensive. And I really am still reckoning with that idea where I'm like, I've always been an open book. I've always shared my thoughts pretty extemporaneously on things and haven't really regretted them too much. But now I think I'm reevaluating what it means or like how worth it is to like be honest about everything. But then at the same time, like if you kind of start to self-sensor a bit, then like what is that due to your idea of yourself? It's hard. I mean, it's not like, whoa, is you. Your life is so hard. No, not at all. But being in the public spotlight, it forces you to figure that out. I think that's what Tina Fey was saying, right? Like you might want to work with these people someday. Sure. But I think I'm just applying that like even just I think I'm applying that to everything where I'm thinking it's not about other people. It's about like my own the way I mull things over just out loud and how yeah and how like the idea that people are listening or watching is so overwhelming if I think about it for too long. And isn't that ironic because I feel like we've all with media, that's the whole point. The whole point is for it to be like disseminated and it's for it to be like distributed widely and literally broadcast, but like there's something a little paralyzing about that. Yeah. Well, and also Bowen, you have to keep things. You have to keep some things for yourself. Totally. That's why me is entitled to all your things. There you go. We've got another quick break. Then Bowen takes on his inner Carl Sagan in the beliefs round. On NPR's through line. The ancient peoples that tie much of the world to a common lineage and how their stories became a justification for white supremacy. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts. The embedded podcast brings you eye opening reporting. There's something that hasn't been disclosed yet. Immersive journalism. I could smell the smoke. I could smell the dust. Personal stories. I was scared. Like I can't protect you. We are NPR's home for documentary storytelling. And embedded wherever you get your podcasts. Bridgerton is back and the Netflix series is as gossipy and over the top as ever. I love the dialogue as ridiculous as it is sometimes. It's the same. I'm so ridiculous. We're talking about the romance and the clothes and the nudity and obviously the queen's hair. Listen to the pop culture happy hour podcast from NPR. Here's short wave we bring the wondrous world of animal science to your daily life. We find inspiration in the cute, gross, incredible and the surprising. From queer animal love stories to metapause and whales, we got your dose of critter knowledge. Listen now to the short wave podcast from NPR. Round three. Okay. Beliefs. Okay. I'm definitely going to use a skip for this. Okay. Let's go. One. Two. Three. Let's go with two. Two. Two. What's a belief you had to let go of? Oh. Wow. This is such a hard question. Tonight, I don't want to skip it, but I feel like I can't, I can't come up with anything right. We're skipping it. We're skipping it. We don't even have to think twice about it. Okay. Great. All right. We are replacing it with one from the deck. Do you think there's more to reality than we can see or touch? Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. I am generally a skeptic with things. I read too many Carl Sagan books in college. I feel like I have to like have some allegiance to science and empirical things and things that are observable and things that can be like represented in data or something. But I feel like there is this meta reality or something that exists that people can tap into because like I know the question is not necessarily implying anything supernatural, but we had on a medium for the podcast. Tell me, tell me. We can go supernatural all day long. Great. Amazing. This guy was pretty good. Tyler Henry. He's also known to some people as the Hollywood medium. And it all sounds like again, like an invite skepticism because you're like like, and how much did he know beforehand? Right. He said things to me that really were like really conceptual and not necessarily, oh, this person is in this other dimension and they're trying to communicate this to you. For me, it was just like, oh, what I'm picking up from you is that like you have this legacy of people who were not able to like share their lives or like the legacy is a little bit blurred. My dad grew up in a rural part of China where most of his relatives are not really documented. There was just no family tree or history to sort of go off of and no one could read and no one went to school. And he was the first in his family to even go to college. And so what Tyler Henry was basically saying was like, you are able to sort of like end this cycle of one shame and two record in a weird way, like you get to sort of like through being yourself and being like a citizen of this world now where people are like constantly tracking things and things are easily recorded for posterity. Like that gets to sort of be like one of your sort of like motivating forces in life. And that's something that like I kind of loved hearing like it was very meaningful to hear because it was borrowed from this like metaphysical space. But at the same time it applies to something that I can do now and it is from a reality that is unobservable, which I kind of love. Last question. Last question. Last question. Let's make it three more cards. We're still in beliefs one, two or three. One, two, three. If you could design the afterlife, what would it look like? Wow. I would love there to be a few roller coasters. Yes. Wait, why am I saying that I hate roller coasters? I would see. I just like the whimsy of it. You're like the whimsy of it. I like where you're going. No, but like you would like a roller coaster for like family members. I want there to be one for other people so I can walk by and hear them laughing and screaming and think, oh, look, isn't it cute that they're having fun on that thing and that I'm not on it wanting to vomit? That's what I would like. Exactly. Like for whatever whatever your beliefs are about roller coasters, there is something about the soundscape of a theme park that is joyous. And that is. Yes. Yes. It is kind of nice to hear people excited and having fun. I just want there to be rides. Right. Okay. Rides. Give me one other detail. Okay. Of course. Oh, this is what I've thought about since I was a kid. And this is not a design as it is just like a feature I would like the afterlife to have or that I've always imagined the afterlife having is like this screenplay of your life of anyone's life. Like as we're talking Rachel, like I want for me to be able for anyone to be able to like look through and be like, this is when bone was talking to Rachel Martin and. And this is not like a deterministic thing. It's not images. It's not images. It's a screenplay. I don't think it's images asked. I don't even think it's like a movie. I don't think anything's like produced out of it except like for it's it's not this like determinist thing. Like I used to think like, Oh, like God or whoever has the script for you and it's set and like that is the determinist thing like I think I want in the afterlife for there just to be a library of screenplays that are for people's experiences and life in that it is all documented. I love a document. I just love documentation in general. I think that's great. What's that? Why? Why? Oh, yeah, just for maybe am I getting really? No, no. Maybe because of the void in your family's document history. Probably. Oh my gosh, Rachel. That's that's great. I mean, like, I think it's that I just like reading dialogue that is literally real because like most of it is boring, but I feel like the way dialogue sort of reads off the page when it's real is fascinating to me. And I don't know. It seems fun and also like it's dry and boring, but also like ultimately fun. That's like that's like. I'm so into this idea of the afterlife heaven, whatever it is, there's a roller coaster and a library in Bowen Yang's afterlife. And I think I like both of those as like the, you know, in the mall, they've got the two stories that are the anchor stores. I like roller coaster and library as the anchor stores of your afterlife mall. I think there you go. There you go. Um, that's it. That's it. So you won, you won the game. So you get a prize and the prize is a trip in our memory time machine. Yes, you get to visit one moment from your past, okay? You revisit one moment from your past. This is not a moment that you want to change anything. This is just a moment that you want to linger in. What do you choose? I am going to choose. There's the moment that Lauren called me to say that I was going to get moved to the cast. And I remember that. And that was great. I was very present in that, but I made it a point to the next day when they said it, oh, we're going to announce you being on the cast tomorrow. And I was like, amazing. And I knew that I had to get up super early that morning, just like for myself. Like I'd known, I didn't have an early call time or anything. I just said, what I have to do is get up at the crack of dawn and you need to take a long walk. And you need to just sit on a bench in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and New York and just watch the sunrise, don't listen to music, just like hear the sounds of like the world around you and take this in. Take this last moment in before you go down this crazy shoot where you will likely have very little control over what happens from this point forward. This is your last moment to like yourself. And it's not to say that it won't go back to that, but like that was like I knew for whatever reason that was going to be like a moment that I had to really claim before things were out there and before people can make like evaluations on you for, this is for you. And I took pictures, I did allow myself like a couple of photos and I look at those all the time. It's just like Prospect Park at dawn, there's a dog, there's someone jogging, but I would love to just go back to that just for a second. So yeah, thanks for letting me go to that place in the time machine. You're welcome. Thanks for taking us there. That was lovely. Of course. Bowen Yang, it has just been the best time. Thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you, Rachel. This is really, really special. This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Dave Blanchard. She was fact-checked by Nicolette Kahn and mastered by Robert Rodriguez. Wild Card's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romtine Ariblui. You can reach out to us at wildcard@npr.org, we'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then. This message comes from NPR sponsor Stearns and Foster. The Stearns and Foster mattress is handcrafted for irresistible comfort with indulgent memory foam and ultra-conforming and telecoils for your most comfortable sleep. Learn more at Stearnsandfoster.com. This message comes from NPR sponsor Betterment. Confusing eye contact with a mysterious stranger is never chill, but Betterment is the investing app that lets you be totally chill about your finances. Betterment.com, investing involves risk, performance is not guaranteed. In any great story, there's a moment that sparks your curiosity, tells you there is more to uncover. How did this happen? How did we get here? That's where embedded comes in. We are NPR's home for documentary journalism, immersive and intimate stories. I was stoned called speechless. Nothing will ever, ever, ever, ever be the same here. Find embedded wherever you get your podcasts.