BIG DEBUT

‘SNL’ Star Makes First Big Move Since Leaving Show

Bowen Yang left the show midseason in December.

Saturday Night Live alum Bowen Yang is coming to Broadway.

Yang, 35, left the series after seven seasons in December. For his Broadway debut, he will play Mary Todd Lincoln in Broadway’s Oh, Mary! starting September 15, producers announced on Tuesday.

The role will mark Yang’s first large-scale project since leaving SNL. Yang said his friendship with Oh, Mary! writer Cole Escola led to the role in a statement to Deadline. “I will spend the rest of my life thanking them for the best Broadway debut a cis gay guy with limited singing ability could ask for,” Yang also said, and called Oh, Mary! a “deranged and profound masterpiece.”

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Oh, Mary!, a slapstick comedy that imagines an alternate reality where first lady Mary Todd Lincoln dreams of being a cabaret dancer, opened to critical acclaim in 2024. At the Tony Awards the following year, the show won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for creator and star Cole Escola, and Best Direction of a Play for Sam Pinkleton.

Yang, who co-hosts the popular Las Culturistas podcast, will follow a star-studded lineup of Mary Todds, including fellow SNL alum Maya Rudolph.

The major move comes after Yang left the show midseason in December. Ahead of Season 51, SNL vets Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim left the show after eight and seven seasons, respectively. Gardner, along with three-seasoners Devon Walker and Michael Longfellow, were axed. Nwodim decided it was time to move on. Yang appeared set to finish the next season until his shock departure was reported.

He confirmed the news just days before his last episode. “I loved working at SNL, and most of all I loved the people,“ he wrote in an Instagram post at the time. ”I was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 Rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwhile. I’m grateful for every minute of my time there.”

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He later explained his thinking behind the choice on his Las Culturistas podcast. “Well, this is the thing. This is honestly what’s behind it. It’s like, it’s time,” he said. Cast members typically “would do seven seasons, and then you would scoot,” he explained.

“I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to,” he added. “Maybe unsure—and I’ve said this before—I was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I’m so glad I did.”

Yang, who is openly gay, has said he felt pigeonholed during his time on the show. “There was like a weird utility to me where I was like, OK, and I’ve accepted this. It’s like I just—I never played like the dad or the straight-man teacher…I was always kind of there, as like, the seasoning,” he told CNN and Variety in June.

He is looking forward to spreading his wings for Oh, Mary!

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“I’m not afraid to be masculine in this Mary,” he told Vulture. “Mary having a complete delusion about her skills versus how other people perceive her feels very male to me, in a way that I relate with.”

He also told the site that this wasn’t the first time the Oh, Mary! team offered him the role. He turned it down last summer because his SNL schedule was too demanding. “I was too yoked to that timeframe to give myself the proper runway,” he said. “I was not going to take a Broadway debut without the utmost seriousness and gravitas and respect.”

Having to pass the first time made him feel more connected to the role, Yang explained. “It’s a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go.”

Mary feels trapped by her own decisions, and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people’s decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.”

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