December 24 2025, 08:15 
On his last episode as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, Bowen Yang got an on-air review from none other than gay icon Cher.
“Well, everyone thought you were a little bit too gay,” Cher told him. “But you know what? You’re perfect for me.”
Related
Barry Manilow announces lung cancer diagnosis, calling its early detection “good news”
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
“I just wanted to go out on top,” Yang told the episode’s host, Ariana Grande.
“Oh, everyone knows you’re a bottom, honey,” Grande replied.
It was a tear-filled sendoff for Yang, who announced this month that he would leave the cast after the December 20 show, the final one of 2025 for the NBC sketch comedy series. He’s been with the show since 2018, when he joined the writing staff for the 44th season. He became a featured player in 2019 and was promoted to repertory status before Season 47.
During his seven-plus years with SNL, Yang, 35, has been nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards, making him the most-nominated Asian male performer in Emmy history. His roles have ranged from George Santos/Kitara Ravache and Charli XCX to Moo Deng (the pygmy hippo) and the Iceberg hit by the Titanic. As Moo Deng, Yang expressed empathy for singer Chappell Roan and the pressures she experienced as a result of her rapid rise to fame.
As his reputation and fan base grew, Yang took on more and more acting work outside SNL, including roles in Fire Island, Bros, Wicked, and Wicked: For Good. He co-hosts the Las Culturistas podcast with Matt Rogers, with whom he’s writing and starring in a movie for Searchlight Pictures. His other projects include voice roles in two animated films, Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, and The Cat in the Hat starring Bill Hader.
As a gay member of the cast, Yang has played gay characters, straight characters, males, females and everything in between. In some of his most memorable sketches, his character’s sexual orientation, if it came across at all, wasn’t as important as the absurdity of the situation. In other sketches, it was central to the bit. Besides cracking jokes, Yang often bore the brunt of them. Because he brought a gay sensibility, audiences were exposed to gay jokes and gay humor in ways they may not have been otherwise.
In the final sketch, Yang, Cher, and Grande were role-playing, but their characters were metaphors for Yang’s own departure from the show. Yang was an employee of Delta Air Lines, working his final day at the eggnog station in the Delta Sky Club lounge at JFK International Airport.
“Sorry, my machine’s kind of breaking down, so I’m closing my station,” he announced. “This is my last shift. Yeah, it’s sad. I’m gonna miss everything about this place. The way it smells, the celebrities who would come through…”
Grande was his “sweetie,” Rhonda, who was initially talking to him on the phone – a stand-in for the show’s audience, perhaps, or Yang’s fans in general. Cher, the guest singer for the night, played Yang’s boss at the airport, a stand-in for SNL producer Lorne Michaels.
“I wish you were home, but I’m so proud of you,” Grande-as-Rhonda told him. “All the eggnog you’ve made over the years. Some of it was great. Some of it was rotten.”
“And a lot of it got cut,” Yang quipped. “But you know, I also think eggnog’s kind of like me. Not for everyone, but the people who like it are my kind of people.”
Grande got off the phone and popped up at the eggnog station: “I wouldn’t miss your last shift for the world,” she told Yang. “I can’t believe you’re retiring.”
That was the set-up Yang needed to look back on his time at SNL.
“Oh Rhonda, I should have come home earlier,” he said. “I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here. And I just wanted to enjoy it for a little bit longer. Especially the people. I’ve loved every single person who works here because they’ve done so much for me, especially my boss… Any success I have after this will be thanks to this place.”
Yang expanded on those thoughts in a post on Instagram, just before the final episode aired.
“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,” he wrote.
“I’m grateful for every minute of my time there,” he continued. “I learned about myself (bad with wigs). I learned about others (generous, vulnerable hot). I learned that human error can be nothing but correct. I learned that comedy is mostly logistics and that it will usually fail until it doesn’t, which is the besssst.”
As for taking a leap into the future, he knows that preparation is key.
The show “doesn’t go on because it’s ready,” he wrote, “but shiiiiit, I hope I am.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.