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‘Saturday Night Live’ Actor Bowen Yang Makes History Twice With Exciting New Emmy Nomination

Saturday Night Live cast member Bowen Yang made history with his well-earned Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He is SNL's first featured player to be nominated for an acting award and the first Chinese American man nominated for the category. This serves as just one of many leaps in diversity at this year's 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, though Asian representation still remains low.
Rosalind O’Connor / NBC

Saturday Night Live cast member Bowen Yang made history with his well-earned Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He is SNL’s first featured player to be nominated for an acting award and the first Chinese American man nominated for the category. This serves as just one of many leaps in diversity at this year’s 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, though Asian representation remains low.

Yang is no stranger to breaking boundaries in comedy. In 2019, he became the third Asian American to join SNL’s main cast. On top of that, Yang is the show’s third openly gay male. Since then, He has graced the cover of Entertainment Weekly, hosts the podcast Las Culturistas, and appeared on shows like Broad City.

This isn’t the first Emmy nomination for the SNL fan-favorite. Yang was a writer for the show back in 2019 and was up for an award in Outstanding Writing For a Variety Series that same year.

Some of Yang’s most popular characters include Flint, the SoulCycle instructor, and Kim Jong-Un. But it was his viral portrayal of the iceberg which sunk the Titanic that really had people noticing his comedic talent.

“The entire week we [wrote the sketch], we just… we’re losing our minds a bit ’cause we kept looking at each other and bursting out laughing, we were like ‘what are we doing,'” Yang said of the writing process on The Tonight Show in May. “This will never make it on TV. Will people get it?”

Still, in his early days at SNL, Yang is bound to create a legacy for himself (and his historic Emmy nomination is just the beginning). Check out his Weekend Update sketch as a ‘canceled iceberg’ to see just why Yang is being considered for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.