This week, “Saturday Night Live” added three new comics, which was particularly newsworthy as one of the hires is the show’s first Chinese-American cast member. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet: He hails from Denver, which he refers to as his hometown .
Bowen Yang, a 29-year-old comic, writer and producer, joined the cast of the long-running NBC sketch series on Sept. 12. Yang’s alma mater, Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, was quick to congratulate him.
“The class of 2008 knew this day would come,” Smoky Hill High School posted on Twitter with a photo of Yang’s senior superlative: “Most Likely to Be a Cast Member on Saturday Night Live.”
Congratulations to Smoky Hill Alumni Bowen Yang who was officially named to this year’s SNL cast! The class of 2008 knew this day would come.
— Smoky Hill High School (@ClarenceBuff)
A writer on “SNL” since last year, Yang has assembled an enviable list of well-received sketches during his freshman stint on the show, including the (co-written with ) and the (co-written with James Anderson), . He also appeared as Kim Jong-un in the “Kremlin Meeting” sketch alongside Sandra Oh, Vulture reported.
Yang, who graduated from New York University with a chemistry degree, becomes the show’s third openly gay male cast member after Terry Sweeney and John Milhiser, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Saturday Night Live’s” 45th season premieres on NBC Sept. 28 with host Woody Harrelson and musical guest Billie Eilish.
Yang, who co-hosts the with Matt Rogers and lives in New York, started out in Smoky Hill’s improv troupe, Spontaneous Combustion, which was formed by veteran teacher Adrian Holguin.
“Smoky Hill has done a good job of encouraging true diversity, and its results have held steady over the years,” Holguin said in a .
Yang was here as recently as Aug. 21 with a live version of his show “I Don’t Think So, Honey!” The performance at Comedy Works downtown, with Pat Regan, featured 30 local comics who were each given a minute “to Go Off on local culture,” according to .
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1MQWe9p6M3/
Yang has also shared images of hiking with his mother at Chief Mountain Trailhead, north of Mount Evans, and Chautauqua Park in Boulder, as well as skiing at Keystone Ski Resort.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOdXVPXgf81/
Representatives at NBC/Universal said Bowen was unavailable for interviews as of mid-day Friday. The show is facing mounting pressure after that another new cast member, Shane Gillis, has in the past used racist, sexist and homophobic remarks in his podcast, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. On Thursday night, that he was “happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I said.”
Updated Sept. 16 at 3:18 p.m.“Saturday Night Live” announced this afternoon that the show would no longer be adding Shane Gillis to this year’s cast. “We want ‘SNL’ to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane on the strength of his talent as comedian and his impressive audition for ‘SNL,'” a representative from the show said in Monday’s statement. “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
