Bowen Yang on the Meaning of Life for ESQUIRE Magazine

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Comedian Bowen Yang joins Jason Bateman as the cover star of Esquire’s Winter “Meaning of Life” issue, the annual event featuring wisdom and advice from a variety of interesting people. After seven seasons at SNL, the comedian has racked up Emmys, built a thriving podcast, and landed roles in major feature films. And yet, Yang says, he’s transforming into someone else entirely.

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On his role models: “My role models when I was a kid—it was Conan, and it was Letterman, and it was Tina and Amy. There’s no one like Tina Fey. She’s my number one.”

On SNL: “Most of my time on the show, I never thought of myself as a star, even after the Emmy nominations, because my point of origin at SNL was this national story on cancel culture. Lorne Michaels said to me, ‘The last thing I want you to do is be the poster child for racial harmony.’ It was a wonderful thing to impart on me, but I think I also took that too far. I took that as permission to stand at the proscenium of the action when I should have run into it. It’s taken me a long time to stand in the light of it all. I’m glad I’ve gotten there.”

On his JD Vance impression: “The secret to my JD Vance impression is hitting that middle zone between smug and self-assured.”

On what he learned from Ariana Grande: “I’ve learned so many things from Ariana Grande. I’ve learned about overcoming things. I lost a sense of myself while we were shooting Wicked because it was just the back-to-back work of doing SNL and then going to London for Wicked and then doing SNL again and going to London. It really unmoored me. And Ari very gently brought me back to shore.”

Bowen Yang’s “What I’ve Learned,” in his own words, is on Esquire.com now and in the Winter issue, available by December 16 everywhere magazines are sold.

[Photo Credit: Mark Seliger for Variety]

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