Bowen Yang Says “It’s a Miracle” That ‘Wicked’ Is Out Given the Political Climate: “It’s About Racism and Fascism”

Bowen Yang is getting real about starring in Wicked and being the face of Saturday Night Live.

The American actor delighted audiences at BFI Flare, the London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, during a screen talk on Thursday in the British capital.

Speaking with his podcast co-host Matt Rogers, Yang was asked about how much he was allowed to ad-lib on Jon M. Chu’s Wicked set and feeling daunted by the “passion” of fellow stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

“I was daunted by the biblical precision and just the passion that everybody was bringing to it,” Yang said. “[But] we’re all in over our heads, everyone except Jon, right? He was the only person who needed to be above water with it and steer the ship. The rest of us were kind of out to sea.”

Yang said that Chu would “prank” him by asking him to improvise after scripted takes, referencing the moment his character nervously asks Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero: “Enroll here often?”

“I said, ‘Okay, I’m now going to do just a fun one, they’re not going to use this. Like, I’m not gonna … outdo [screenwriters] Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox. No way. ‘Then Jon used all of my ad libs!”

The star says he still feels like a “college student” when it comes to analyzing Wicked‘s themes, explaining that he feels it is “politically tragic,” just as much as it is commercially appealing and artistically beautiful. “It’s crazy that Wicked is out in the world and doing so well,” he said. “When it’s a story about racism and fascism, all these things. I’m like, ‘Oh shit, yeah.’ It is miraculous that it’s out there… Like, the only reason that the wizard has powers is because he creates problems for other people.”

Yang also opened up about his imposter syndrome on the set of SNL, revealing it was only when he took LSD on vacation that he could imagine himself in the show. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. What is me being on this show? What is that gonna look like? That’s gonna that feel crazy’… I was on the beach, that’s where I took the LSD. And then I got over that idea by just watching sketches on my phone of [Bill Hader’s recurring character] Stefon. I hallucinated myself as Stefon. And I was like, ‘Oh I see it now.’ And I got to tell Bill that.”

His next starring role is in Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet with Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran and Han Gi-chan. “That’s Andrew’s talent,” he began, “He knows the [rom-com] trope. He will dial it up to the mass, and then completely cut off the thread. It’s a rule of writing in comedy, too. You pull a thread loose, and that’s the first thing. Then you yank it again and then you cut the thread. Then you think it’s over, and you yank it one more time.”

Yang also said acting opposite the “Meryl Streep of Korea,” Youn Yuh-jung, was an exhilarating experience: “She’s a fucking legend in Korea. There’s a scene where we shoot a Korean wedding, and there’s a lot of Korean background [actors], a lot of Korean crew, and she just sucks the air out of the room. She walks in, and everyone just straightens up.”

Youn was not at first sure about the role when she read the script, but her son said she should give it another read. “He was like, ‘I’m gay’… they had their own specifics,” Yang said, “But it seemed like they had their own really beautiful journey in terms of coming together.”

The Wedding Banquet hits theaters Apr. 18 in the U.S.