Bowen Yang invites Tina Fey to his podcast. He’s still thinking about what she said: NPR

Yang Bowen’s talk wild card About his proudest moment as a child, the hard truth from Tina Fey, and why he thinks there’s more to reality than we can see or touch?

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Comments from wild card Host Rachel Martin: So, I have to tell you, I take research very seriously. My team and I spent hours digging into our guests’ articles and profiles, trying to understand them. This is serious work. Of course, this was my preparation for the conversation with Bowen Yang.

I already knew a lot of things─like he was the first Chinese-American actor saturday night live. I know the inside jokes from his podcast bodybuilderwhich he co-hosts with his best friend Matt Rogers.

But I also have to acknowledge the fact that the research for this interview couldn’t have come at a better time. Because I have an excuse to go see a lot of SNL clip. The iceberg that sank the Titanic, the Chinese spy balloon, and the intern Yang Bowen at the Tiny Desk concert are all classics.

As much as I loved him on Saturday Night Live, that’s a romantic comedy in 2022 fire island It made me fall in love with him. He took what could have been a light-hearted and light-hearted character and turned him into a character who never fails to make this guy heartbreakingly real and a joyful best friend. So I’m really excited to talk to Bowen wild card.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests questions randomly selected from a deck of cards. Click play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: When you were a child, when did you feel proud?

Yang Bowen: In first grade—or first grade as we call it in Canada, I was in Montreal—there was one day in school where we only had one class, drawing. I have pastels and then it’s just unstructured painting time, right? A grade one classic. I drew a clown with blue hair and a flower in his shirt, standing outside a circus, and then the clown had a speech bubble and he was saying “Allô” which is the French Quebecois greeting “Allô” .

Pretty simple thing, right? But apparently, the teacher at the time thought it was too complicated, so she submitted it to this art contest, and I won a whole $20 CAD. I think it was a really important moment of creative validation for me growing up, and my parents were really excited.

Martin: Did your parents think you would become an artist, or did you just give up on that career?

Which: No, they really pushed that, and for some reason the arts were an acceptable creative outlet for Asian immigrant kids.

Martin: This is all high art! High art.

Which: This is high art! So I think when I moved into improv comedy a few years later, like telling jokes on stage, they were very confused because they were like, “This is so rough.”

Question 2: What have you learned to be careful about?

Which: ah. This is really something I’ve been thinking about for the past two or three months? Tina Fey came on my podcast and she challenged me in a really funny, wonderful way about sharing what I really think about movies, and what I really think about movies in general, on the podcast.

Basically, what Tina is saying is, this is a permanent record. Like this thing, the web is written in permanent marker. Her words went viral, “Truth is dangerous and costly.”

I’m definitely still thinking about this idea, I’m always an open book. I always share my thoughts on things very off the cuff and don’t really regret it too much. But now I think I’m re-evaluating what that means or likes, and how worth it is to be honest about everything. But at the same time, if you start doing some self-censorship, what impact does that have on how you feel about yourself?

Question 3: Do you think there are things in reality that we can’t see or touch?

Which: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I’m generally skeptical of things. I read too many Carl Sagan books in college. But I feel like there’s this meta-reality or something that people can tap into because – and I know this question doesn’t necessarily mean anything supernatural – but we have a medium [Las Culturistas] Podcast, Tyler Henry. He is also known by some as a Hollywood medium. And again, that breeds suspicion because you wonder, how much did he know beforehand? He said some very conceptual things to me that weren’t necessarily, “Oh, this person is in another dimension and they’re trying to convey that to you.”

To me, it’s like, “Oh, what I get from you is that you have the legacy of these people who couldn’t share their lives, or the legacy is a little bit blurry.” My father grew up in rural China, where his elder There are no real records of most relatives. There was no genealogy or history to draw from, no one could read, no one went to school, and he was even the first in his family to go to college.

So basically what Tyler Henry is trying to say is, you can end this cycle of one, shame, and two, recording in a weird way. Like, you can – by being yourself, just like a citizen of a world where people are constantly tracking things and things are easily recorded for posterity – and that becomes one of the driving forces in your life. This is what I like to hear. It makes a lot of sense to hear that because it’s borrowed from this metaphysical space, but at the same time it applies to what I can do now, and it comes from an unobservable reality that I love.

Want to hear the entire conversation? listen Complete Wild Card Episodes With Rachel and Bowen Yang.