Comedian Reflects On ‘Cringe’ Feelings Working On ‘SNL’: ‘People Constantly Tell You How Much It Sucks’

Comedian Bowen Yang said working on the popular sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” was the “cringiest” job.

Yang discussed his thoughts with co-host Matt Rogers during a recent episode of their “Las Culturistas” podcast. The pair discussed how sometimes it’s embarrassing to make certain career moves, referencing President Joe Biden’s ending his re-election campaign.

“You have to sometimes climb up a huge hill of cringe,” Rogers said. “And once you can scale that hill — which is, you know, it might be your judgment of yourself, on what you’re doing, it might be everyone saying what you’re doing is cringe — on the other end, you slide down into happiness and nirvana.”

Yang, an “SNL” alum, chimed in, saying he was embarrassed about his stint on the show, which began in 2018. 

“I know about working through cringe, climbing a cringe mountain, I work at Saturday f***ing Night Live, the cringiest thing in show business on every level,” he said. “Cringe Mountain is SNL.”

The comedian added, “Eternally grateful that I worked there, will be the defining thing of my life and career, and yet it is a cringe mountain because to live through working at SNL and to have people constantly tell you how much it sucks, how bad it is, how it’s not as good as it used to be, for your career — that has to do something to you psychologically where you emerge and go, ‘I don’t give a f***.’”

Rogers voiced some disagreement with the assessment. “I don’t think it’s cringe,” he said of “SNL,” per Entertainment Weekly. “But I will say… everyone has a f***ing opinion. It’s the most popular show in the world, it’s now been on for 50 years, it is Capital C commercial culture, and therefore it’s cringe because everyone is like, ‘I’m having something to say.’”

“And it’s corporate, you know what I mean? It’s all those things,” he added. “But on the other side of it, guess what Bowen: you get to actually, the visceral thing of people laugh, people feel good. And that is why we’re doing this and that is why America is worth saving.”