Bowen Yang speaks out against criticism of lacking 'range'

Bowen Yang, a comic at Saturday Night Live, faced criticism for lacking the "range" in his comedy. Now, as he exited the sketch comedy show, he addressed the critique directly.

“I feel like I was really bogged down the entire time I was there about the idea that there was no range in anything I did,” he says on the Las Culturistas podcast.

The comedian further notes that sketch comedy is based on archetypes, suggesting he cannot show his depth in such a genre.

“I knew I was never gonna play the dad. I was never gonna play the generic thing in sketches. It’s a sketch show; Each thing is like four minutes long. It is short and collapsed by necessity, so therefore it plays on archetypes," he shares.

These archetypes, in turn, seemingly bound his hands, says Bowen at SNL, because whenever he tried an out-of-the-box character, it fell flat.

“These archetypes are also in a relationship with generic things, and there is a genericism in whiteness and in being a canvas to build upon. I came in pre-stretched, pre-dyed."

He continues, "People had their over-determinations on what I was, which was: ‘Oh, that’s just the gay Asian guy on “SNL.”‘ So anytime I would try to work outside of that, it got completely ignored or it still got collapsed to, ‘Oh, he’s being gay and Asian as always.'” (Yang was the first-ever Asian cast member of “SNL.”)

It is worth noting that Bowen is the first Asian cast member of Saturday Night Live.