Bowen Yang faced his biggest challenge yet when playing JD Vance on SNL. It wasn’t embodying such an abhorrent political figure (whose many absurd comments don’t take a comedic genius to ridicule). It was that Yang realized the man simply doesn’t have a personality.
On the 50th season premiere episode in September, Yang stepped onto the SNL stage in Vance’s shoes. But despite the best efforts of the wardrobe department to give Yang a convincing getup, he was convinced the role was a mistake.
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In a recent interview with Them, Yang looked back on the making of the sketch, and he recalled trying to talk SNL creator Lorne Michaels out of casting him.
“Up until the show, I tapped [Michaels] on the shoulder and I was in the full beard and the full geish and I was like, ‘You can do a buyback if you want,’” Yang said. Michaels refused, and the show went on as planned.
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Why was Yang so hesitant? He couldn’t find a way into the character. But it turns out that’s because there is no character there.
Yang experienced a stroke of inspiration when he watched the Netflix adaptation of Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy. In one portion, Vance questions whether he is gay. When he brought it up to his “mamaw,” she shut it down, and Vance obediently ceased his questioning.
This incident brought the character (or lack thereof) to life for Yang. “I was just like, Oh, this guy doesn’t have a personality because he’s never had the spine to claim it,” said Yang.
True to his word, Yang’s rendering of Vance gave (in the best way possible) alien mimicking human emotions. “I’m sure you’ve all heard what the liberal media’s been saying about me,” he said in the sketch. “‘I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?’ I’ll tell you what I’m doing here—getting this crowd hyped.” And the crowd appropriately does not respond to his weird vibes.
Yang portrayed Vance with such success that he reprised the role the following week (opposite Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz) in a cold open sketch of the Vice Presidential debate.
As a palate cleanser, Yang gave us his rendition of viral baby hippo Moo Deng in that same season premiere episode. With the election close at hand, here’s hoping there’s more Moo Deng than Vance in Yang’s future.
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