Comedians Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang are besties, but they’re definitely not twins. So why were they confused for each other in an article?
On November 30, The Hollywood Reporter ran a piece on actress Julianna Margulies’ divisive comments from The Back Room With Andy Ostroy podcast. The article collected X (formerly Twitter) reactions to Margulies’ words, but in the process it erroneously confused Booster and Yang for each other in the piece.
Booster posted, ”Y’all. Isn’t it your literal job to tell people in my industry apart??? Please use my preferred credit, Saturday Night Live Comedian’s Friend!!”
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Neither comedian resembles each other and unfortunately, the error feeds into the bias that people of color can’t be told apart from each other. Booster and Yang famously starred in the film Fire Island, written also by Booster, with racism and prejudice within the LGBTQ+ community being a main theme.
Unfortunately, the mistake wasn’t the first time the publication mixed up the two comedians, with Booster posting about the previous mishap as well. In 2019, the publication posted a picture of Booster to X with the caption “Get to know #SNL’s newest cast member @bowenyang.”
Naturally, the internet was appalled by the lack of concern to distinguish the two comedians apart during the botched SNL casting announcement and history repeated itself with this mishap as well.
The article has since been updated with a correction.