Comedian Bowen Yang is leaving the cast of Saturday Night Live and will no longer be a part of the long-running sketch show after the final episode airs.
In a post on Instagram, Yang declined to share the reason for his departure, which comes midseason, but said he is “grateful for every minute of my time there.”
“I loved working on SNL and, most of all, I loved the people,” wrote Yang, who began in 2018 as a writer for the NBC show before joining the cast.
Yang, 35, is the first Chinese-American actor in SNL history and has become one of SNL’s most prominent cast members in recent years.
In her Instagram post, Yang described the lessons she learned while working on SNL.
“I learned about myself (bad with wigs). I learned about others (generous, vulnerable, attractive),” she wrote.
“I learned that human error can’t be anything but right. I learned that comedy is mostly logistical and that it usually fails until it doesn’t fail, which is for the best.”
He also thanked other cast members, as well as Lorne Michaels, the show’s longtime producer.
Yang was behind some of the show’s most memorable characters and parodies, including as the iceberg that sank the Titanic and as disgraced former congressman George Santos.
Yang’s final episode, airing Saturday night, will be hosted by Ariana Grande, one of the stars of the film Wicked: For Good.
Yang also had a role in the film and has starred in previous films including The Wedding Banquet, Fire Island, Bros, and the first Wicked film.
For his work on SNL, he has been nominated for five Emmy Awards. He also co-hosts the Las Culturistas podcast and is expected to voice a character in the animated film Cat in the Hat due out next year.
