Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang, who also plays Pfannee in Wicked and the upcoming Wicked: For Good, made a surprise appearance on the November 3 episode of The Voice Season 28, auditioning for the show all the way from Oz, and things went…maybe not as well as he wanted.
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Watch The Voice Mondays at 9/8c on NBC and next day on Peacock.
The pre-taped episode intro began with Coaches Niall Horan, Michael Bublé and Reba McEntire wandering through an otherworldly forest, with Horan asking, “Reba, are you sure this is The Voice stage?” McEntire answers, “I think so.”
“It smells different,” remarks Bublé, and that’s when Yang appears.
“Good nose, Bublé. Welcome to Oz!” he says.
“I’m so sorry, I think we took a wrong turn. Perhaps you can guide us back to—” asks McEntire, but Yang stops her.
“No no, Reebs. Our two worlds have collided so that I can realize my lifelong dream… Of auditioning for you all. So if you would all please turn around; I can’t have you looking at me. Especially you, Niall. I can feel your smolder,” Yang says, making them re-enact a “Blind” Audition, even though, of course, they know it’s him.
Bowen Yang sang Wicked‘s “For Good” for his Voice “Blind Audition”
Warbling out the (spoiler!) final lines of the musical, Yang really leaned in to the emotionality of the climax of Wicked. “Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun, I have been changed for good,” he sings. Sadly, Yang did not hit all the notes.
“Wow, no chair turns,” he said, clearly disappointed. “Sorry, Bowen,” replied Horan.
“Hey, I liked the song,” offered McEntire.
“I think my button is broken,” claimed Bublé.
“Well, I appreciate your honesty. Just know I will never get over this,” said Yang. As the Coaches left for the Knockouts, he called out, “I am available to Mega Mentor!” Honestly, would love to see it.
Bowen Yang had a full-circle moment watching Wicked with his SNL family
During a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Yang recalled watching part one of Wicked for the first time, and how it represented a culmination of all his childhood dreams at once. “I saw it for the first time with people at SNL when [Wicked star Ariana Grande] came to host, they did a screening for all of us,” he said. “…My first trip to New York City…I begged my parents to go to the Gershwin Theater [where the Broadway show of Wicked lives]. We couldn’t afford tickets, but I begged them to go so I could touch the glass and look at the lobby and see what it was like inside. And the same day, we came to 30 Rock, we came here [for] the studio tour at SNL, and I was like, I got to be in both of those things…sometimes the universe makes it so easy. I was like, I have to see it with my SNL family.”
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Yang also revealed that many of the hilarious moments you see from him in Wicked were not in the original script. “Those were mostly improvised,” he told Fallon of his character’s lines. “This is the thing: I was like, ‘I’m not gonna change a word of this script, this is a perfect script, I’m not gonna ruin this movie with my thoughts. But then on every camera take, [director] John M. Chu…was like, ‘Now do one just for fun.'”
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“And then, this man pulled a fast one on me. He used every single ad lib!” Yang explained, adding, “I am so sorry that millions of people have to see me say these silly words.”
