Meet Bowen Yang: Emmy-nominated comedian, Saturday Night Live’s first Chinese-American, third openly gay male cast member and one of Time’s ‘100 Most Influential People’

Sep 26 , 2021

Bowen Yang arrives at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021, at L.A. Live in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Yang is famous for his portrayals of Andrew Yang and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the comedy sketch show, and also stars in Awkwafina is Nora from Queens

Covering Entertainment Weekly’s Pride issue, the LGBT icon has also opened up about his conservative family once wanting him to undergo conversion therapy

He may not have received an Emmy last weekend, but Bowen Yang has won in so many other ways, with numerous accomplishments under his belt.

The charming comedian is the very first Chinese-American cast member on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, and he is also among the cast’s first openly gay men. He has become famous for his hilarious portrayals of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, Chinese trade representative “Trade Daddy” and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He also has a well-known pop culture podcast Las Culturistas and stars on the sitcom Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.

Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang stars as “The Iceberg that Sank the Titanic” alongside anchor Colin Jost. Photo: NBC via AP

“There are these deeply entrenched ideas about what an Asian person should do in front of the camera,” Yang said in a video for Time. “Everything I try to like in life is tainted by this weird mental model of what an Asian person does in film and in television. I feel like I spent a lot of my career playing into those things. Then realising that, ‘I don’t have to do that.’”

Yang was recently selected to be part of Time magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People of 2021” list (along with cover stars Prince Harry and Meghan Markle). Here, we look at his rise to fame and how he has come to have such an influence today.

Bowen Yang stars in Awkwafina is Nora from Queens season 2. Photo: Comedy Central

Before emigrating to Australia in the 1980s, Yang’s family originated from China. His father grew up in rural Inner Mongolia, living a lifestyle that was very different to Yang’s current one: he was raised in a straw and mud hut and, since his parents were illiterate, he taught himself how to read and write by reading books, eventually enrolling in university. He eventually moved to Brisbane with Yang’s mother, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, to get his doctorate.

While the family has come a long way – both literally and figuratively – Yang’s parents still maintained a conservative mindset, and Yang, who was once on the cover of Entertainment Weekly’s Pride issue, remembers that his parents even once wanted him to undergo conversion therapy.

Last year, he told The New York Times: “They just sat me down and yelled at me and said, ‘We do not understand this. Where we come from, this does not happen.’”