Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live, after all.
Deadline understands that Yang will leave midseason, during the Christmas break, after tomorrow night’s show, which is hosted by his Wicked co-star Ariana Grande with a musical performance by Cher.
Yang joined the show as a writer in 2018 ahead of Season 44 and joined the cast ahead of Season 45, before being promoted to repertory status ahead of Season 47.
Yang becomes the latest cast member to leave midseason; Cecily Strong left the show in December 2022 during Season 48.
His exit is not a complete surprise; he has talked about potentially leaving the show over the last few months. In September, he told People that he had discussed it with creator Lorne Michaels.
“Lorne was like, ‘You have more to do,’ and that means a lot, because I even confessed to him… ‘I feel the audience is maybe getting sick of me.’ And he was like, ‘That’s not true. There’s more for you to do. I need you’,” he said.
Yang has, however, had to miss shows this season; he skipped a show in October to accept the Vantage Award at a gala at the Academy Museum in LA.
Yang has been one of the breakout stars of SNL over the last few years. He was the first featured player to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series category.
He has gone viral with a raft of sketches including as the Titanic iceberg on Weekend Update, as Jafar, as a straight man who hooks up with Gina Gershon and Sydney Sweeney, as a gay Oompa Loompa and as George Santos.
But he’s also got a very busy dance card; in addition to roles on Bros and Fire Island, he starred as Pfannee in Wicked and its sequel Wicked: For Good. He hosts the Las Culturistas podcast with Matt Rogers, which has been turned into a Bravo awards show, and is writing and co-starring in a comedy feature based on an episode of the Search Engine podcast for Searchlight Pictures.
Yang’s departure comes after a cast exodus after Season 50; Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim all exited over the summer.
In September, Michaels addressed the exits, saying that “change is good”. “The show has always brought people in from different ages and different generations and it’s how it revives itself,” Michaels told Entertainment Tonight. “It’s always hard when people leave but there’s a time for that and our audiences always stayed relatively young and more so now with Tik Tok, and change is good. And the people we’re bringing in I’m really excited about.”
