-Our next guest is an Emmy-nominated writer, comedian,
and actor you know from his work on "Saturday Night Live."
He stars in the scripted podcast "Hot White Heist,"
which is available exclusively through Audible.
Please welcome back to the show our friend Bowen Yang.
How are you, Bowen?
-Hi, Seth. I'm good.
What an honor to be in this Denverite show,
like, just to share the bill with Peyton.
-That's right.
You spent time in Colorado,
and of course, Peyton Manning lives there now.
I did not realize how Rocky Mountain high tonight was.
-I get altitude sickness whenever I go back,
so I've lost my powers. -Did you really?
You've just been gone for a little amount of time,
and you can't go back?
-I can't go back, no.
-Wow, and that probably explains why you're in Georgia now.
-Exactly, I'm in Georgia. I'm fulfilling my uncle duties
in Georgia for the first time since the pandemic.
It's wonderful.
-Do you have nieces and nephews, one of each?
What do you got?
-I got two nieces.
The older one is three.
She's just starting to talk and express herself
and set her own boundaries or defy others.
And it's interesting.
Right now, we're teaching her how to cough properly.
-Oh, got you. -Just to cover your mouth.
It's really -- It's really strange to do it in public,
to teach a child how to cough properly in public.
But I'm doing more than the CDC is in terms of,
like, knowing how to do -- -Yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't call you a first responder,
but it does seem like you're responsive.
-There you go.
Tertiary responder? Happy to be.
-Are you good with kids historically?
-No. In fact, I think this is just kind of confirming
for myself that I'm terrible with kids.
The older niece is getting upset and she's crying sometimes,
then I'll just turn around and go,
"Ellie, I'm not seeing any tears," like an acting coach.
[ Laughter ] Like, I'm awful.
And then the other day, she was drinking water out of a cup.
She refused to have ice in it.
She loves Elsa from "Frozen," however.
And I said to her, I said,
"Ellie, you know who loves ice is Elsa.
And if you love Elsa, shouldn't you love ice?"
And she -- Her eyes glazed over
and I think I throttled her into an existential crisis.
[ Laughter ] So I'm terrible with kids.
-Well, you're good at a lot of other things,
including this podcast.
This is a "Heist" Audible podcast.
-Yes. -It's an all-queer cast.
And I want you to explain it.
You were on the "Today" show,
and they asked you to explain it.
And then they told you to remember it was a morning show.
Look, it's a different side of morning right now.
We're on the other side of midnight.
Go wild. Explain it how you wish.
-What I couldn't say to Jenna Bush Hager was that it is
an Audible-scripted podcast about a sperm-bank heist
in which we were stealing the sperm
of all of our past presidents since Kennedy
and the sperm of Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Zuckerberg,
the guy who invented the Segway.
Our greatest minds have their sperm stored
under the Space Needle
and we have to pull off an all-queer heist
in order to serve a group of lesbian militants in Montana.
-[ Laughs ] -That's the pitch.
-That's a very good pitch.
And I feel like people could've handled that in the morning.
I got to be honest. I think that that would be fine.
-Yeah, I think so too.
-I want to ask. You play a sort of grifter of sorts.
You came to New York to go to NYU.
Were you one of those sort of clear-eyed maybe, sort of maybe
overtrusting people when you first got to New York?
-Absolutely. I was swindled out of my entire net worth
within two months of moving here.
It was Halloween 2008, a week before the election,
and I decided to walk over to the parade.
Or no, I was walking to some dorm,
and I crossed the street at Union Square.
And someone stopped me and said,
"Hey, you stepped on my glasses"
and held up this pair of shattered frames,
and he was like, "I need these to see.
You need to pay me $100 right now."
I said, "I am so sorry.
I don't believe I did that,
but if I did, I don't have the money."
He kept following me, and then I had gotten --
I had acquiesced at that point.
I was just like, "Fine, you can come with me to the ATM.
I need to pick up some cash, but I have to tell you,
I have $13 in my bank account right now,
so I do need to call my father so he could deposit
at least $7 for me to give you $20."
And so then, his face fell and he was like, "Oh, okay, sure."
And I think he felt sorry for me at that point,
so that when we were waiting for the money to transfer
at the ATM, he's making really, really polite small talk with me
and being like, "You know, there's this parade every year
and it's really wonderful.
Oh, you just moved to New York? You'd love this parade."
He was being very kind to me afterward.
-That's very nice. He realized you were going to be out
20 bucks but he didn't want your whole night to be a wash.
-Exactly.
-You had such a wonderful season on "SNL."
Congratulations.
I think the thing that I would've least predicted maybe
going into the season is that you would play Fran Lebowitz.
I think that I may be equally enamored with Fran to you.
How did this even come about?
Because it's not, let's say, natural casting.
-No, it's not.
But I kind of wanted to go for it anyway.
I was just, let's say, under the influence of something in bed
watching "Pretend It's a City."
And I thought to myself, "I'm going to play her.
I'm going to play her on 'Update.'"
And then I texted one of the writers, Sudi Green,
a very good friend and I said, "I have this crazy idea,
but I think I have to play Fran Lebowitz on 'Update.'"
And then she said, "That's great.
Let's get Kyle as Scorsese."
I was like, "Perfect."
And then, the next day, Anna Drezen, our head writer,
texted me, "Crazy idea, but I think you should play
Fran Lebowitz on 'Update.'"
I said, "Sudi and I had the same thought."
And then we did it the Saturday afterwards.
And I was like, this is the best part of working here,
is that you get to ideate something so silly
the week before and then have it be on TV the next week.
-Everyone I talked to loved it, and yet, there was one person,
a sort of notable person who did not care for it
and recently went on the record as not caring for it.
-That's right. Fran herself has gone from --
Andy Cohen had reached out for comment.
She had said that she has no interest in seeing it,
which I loved at the time.
And then I think last week she's gone on record
to say that she does not like it.
And so I think that's confirmation that she's seen it
and that she doesn't care for it.
And I think that's the highest compliment you can possibly get
from someone like Fran. -I think that's right.
I think that if Fran Lebowitz said,
"Oh, my God, I loved it, and it's so cool to be on 'SNL,'"
like, it would just ruin everything.
-Terrible, yeah, absolutely.
So I wear it as a badge of honor
that she did not like my portrayal of her.
I probably wouldn't either.
If, like, someone who is like so demographically opposite of me
portrayed me, I'd be like, "Come on." So no.
-I bet even if you were demographically
right on the nose, she probably would've felt the same way.
-[ Laughs ] Okay, fair, fair.
-I mean, she's Fran Lebowitz.
We'll give her a lot of space to be critical of things.
-Sure. Absolutely.
-Hey, thanks so much for being here.
Congrats again on another great year.
And congrats on the podcast. Thanks for being here, Bowen.
-Thanks, Seth.
-"Hot White Heist" -- here it is --
is available exclusively through Audible.