Bowen Yang Bombed His First ‘Saturday Night Live’ Screen Test After Interaction With Lorne Michaels

Bowen Yang is looking back on bombing his first Saturday Night Live screen test after an interaction with Lorne Michaels.

The SNL standout stopped by Hot Ones ahead of the release of Wicked, in which he stars as Pfannee. During his appearance, he recalled his first screen test for the sketch series in 2017.

“The final step in that process is you have a one-on-one meeting with Lorne. It was him and another producer, Erik Kenward,” Yang said. “The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘I’m Canadian, too. I grew up in Montreal. I grew up in Quebec’ — and immediately it was done, it was a vibe killer. I didn’t get the job because I had pandered to his Canadianness, and it was a disaster.”

The comedian and actor continued, explaining that the executive producer asked him if he spoke French and then went out to speak to Kenward about how the French have great books. Yang then went on to share that he received some counsel from former castmember Aidy Bryant when he joined the show the following year about how to interact with the comedy show’s creator.

“Aidy Bryant was the one who told me, ‘You can be, like, friends with him now,’” Yang recalled. “I think Lorne at one point was hanging out with Aidy and kind of chuckling about it like, ’I think Bowen sees me as a mountain to climb, and I don’t want him to think that anymore.’ That kind of gave me the encouragement I needed to go up to him and be like, ‘Oh, we can relate to each other on a human-to-human level,’ which I never thought would happen with him.”

Yang previously spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the first screen test and his last seven years with SNL — the first one as a writer and the following six as a castmember.

“Going in for my first screen test, it was completely vulnerable,” he said. “I knew nobody was going to laugh — that’s the legend of the SNL screen test, no one laughs — I remember walking away from that first audition and going, ‘Well, I’m not nervous. I will never be nervous ever again.’”

All these years later, the Las Culturistas podcast host also noted he’s still “constantly reminded of how special the show is,” adding, “We have all these opportunities to bring a comedic idea to its full creative fulfillment, and we’re so lucky. It’s kind of the only live show left where people tune in as it happens.”