Bowen Yang

Bowen Yang joined Saturday Night Live as a staff writer in 2018 and moved in front of the camera the following year, staying seven seasons until his departure in 2025. In 2021 he became the first SNL featured player nominated for a Primetime Emmy, and was promoted to repertory status the same year. Born in Brisbane in 1990, he is also a writer and a podcaster, co-hosting Las Culturistas.

Sketch performers almost always import their sketch persona into film, and for a while he did too: the scene-stealing supporting turn in Isn't It Romantic, The Lost City and Bros, all of them built on the same delivery, a total and unembarrassed commitment to an absurd premise. He is extremely good at it, and the Wicked films use exactly that gear for Pfannee.

What makes his filmography worth following is the work where he switches it off. Howie in Fire Island is a real dramatic performance, hurt and hesitant and given room to breathe, and Chris in The Wedding Banquet continues that line. Fantasmas puts him somewhere else again, in a series with no interest in conventional comic structure at all.

Alongside that there is a substantial voice career, in The Garfield Movie, The Monkey King, The Tiger's Apprentice, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Jentry Chau vs the Underworld and The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, with The Cat in the Hat and Tangles due in 2026.