Bowen Yang Doesn’t Know If ‘SNL’ Will Exist in a Post-Colbert World

The 51st season of Saturday Night Live will premiere on October 4th. Well, at least that’s the hope.

Bowen Yang recently guested on WTF with Marc Maron and admitted that he’s not entirely confident about the show’s future, now that other late-night shows critical of President Trump are being randomly yanked off of the air.

When asked whether or not everything is okay at SNL, Yang responded, “I think so. I mean, I hope we’re on the air.” 

When asked to elaborate, the Wicked star revealed that he fears for the show’s future “after this Colbert shit.”

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was famously canceled by CBS, allegedly for financial reasons. But clearly a whole lot of people aren’t buying that explanation, given Colbert’s his comments about CBS’ parent company Paramount seemingly “bribing” U.S. president Donald Trump with a $16 million settlement, conveniently in advance of their proposed merger with Skydance Media, which was eventually approved by the Trump administration’s FCC.

When Maron pointed out that SNL is on NBC, not CBS, Yang still wasn’t entirely convinced. “Yeah, you’re right. But like, if they decide to merge out of nowhere… I don’t know,” he responded. 

“It could happen to anybody, I guess,” Maron reasoned. 

Yang also recalled a recent dinner with an SNL writer in which the co-workers discussed what the “vibe” of the upcoming season will be, presumably due to the palpable atmosphere of dread that seems to surround most living things at the moment and the precarious state of network comedy. He also expressed genuine concern for fellow cast member James Austin Johnson, who of course, plays Trump on the show. “We were like, should he be worried at all? Like, all it takes is for Trump to say one thing about him.”

“I don’t want to engender any sort of fear on anyone’s behalf,” Yang continued, “but I just think I’m interested to see what the show will be like.”

Maron suggested that Trump may not pick on Johnson the way he publicly complained about Alec Baldwin because he “had an axe to grind with Baldwin that preceded SNL. That guy was always up his ass for whatever reason.” Plus, Trump hasn’t been “paying a lot of attention to SNL” lately.

After comparing Trump to Mao Zedong, Yang pointed out that during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao “destroyed everything else but kept the hutongs intact,” referring to Beijing’s historic alleyways. “What is SNL if not an American cultural hutong?” he joked. 

Given the current state of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, perhaps SNL will survive by inviting Greg Gutfeld to host the premiere and/or making jacked Trump a non-ironic recurring character.