Therapy was two hours south in Colorado Springs, where the megachurches are visible from space. Dad waited in the lobby while Bowen would visit with “some quack,” and then father and son would make the drive back up I-25—which strangely enough “became a fun bonding experience,” Bowen says, even if the therapy itself didn't do all that much. “The irony is that I end up at NYU,” he says, “which is like the gayest undergrad in the world.” (Dad asked the quack for recommendations for other quack therapists in NYC, and he was told: “Unfortunately, there aren't that many people in New York who do this…”)

It's a common kind of conflict for first- and second-generation kids: Your parents are operating from a place of love, just trying to protect you, but it's a hard concept to articulate, at least at first. “Any distortion of what they saw as a normative sexual existence was so foreign to them that they were just trying to figure out how to make sure I was going to be okay,” says Bowen. “And the more I've understood that, the more they've expressed that in their own words.”

“Now we have a great relationship,” he adds.

These days the family is close-knit. They take frequent vacations together—Disneyland was a favorite destination, and the holidays this year were spent traipsing around Paris—but at the end of the day they're still, y'know, his parents. “My dad every now and then will toe that line and be like, You could try women!” says Bowen, laughing. “And I'm like…Don't. It's almost an endearing kind of homophobia, if such a thing exists.”

Blazer, $2,350, by Bottega Veneta / Shirt, by Fendi / T-shirt, $105, by A.P.C. / Pants, $695, by Ralph Lauren / Shoes, $1,195, by Santoni / Socks, $27, by Falke

Back in September, when SNL announced additions to its lineup—Bowen, Chloe Fineman, and Shane Gillis—there was an air of excitement. Notably around Bowen, the first Asian American person to join the cast provided you discount things like the one-fourth-Filipino part of Rob Schneider. But the mood shifted when the internet uncovered a video from 2018 in which Gillis was heard participating in a rambling tangent about Chinese food, Chinatown, and the people who inhabit it. Gillis said the word “chink” in the clip, and soon his name became a trending topic on Twitter. “It was hurtful, but at the same time it wasn't even that surprising,” Bowen says, remembering the incident. “It's shit I've heard all my life.”

Gillis was ultimately removed from the show. As the chaos swirled around them, Bowen tracked down Gillis's contact info, opened up some space in his heart, and texted him something along the lines of: “Hey, this is all really crazy.… Let me know if you want to talk.” Bowen didn’t hear anything that night. The next day, in an odd bit of cosmic symmetry, he was on the set of Nora from Queens for the last day of shooting, surrounded by his Asian cast mates, when Shane finally hit him back. Bowen had even gone to Pearl River Mart in Chinatown (“best store in New York!”) to get a few gifts for the rest of the crew.

When they talked, Bowen says Gillis was contrite. The two reached an understanding, and that was that. “He deserves some level of progression out of this,” says Bowen. “We both deserve to not live in this moment that was unfortunate for everybody for the rest of our careers.” Folks on the internet (myself included) pitted Shane against Bowen when neither of them asked for it, inadvertently showing how tricky it is for a young artist burdened with being a “first”: You might be a product of your different overlapping identities, but you don't want to be defined by any one of them. All you want is the basic human luxury of being seen as multidimensional—to have the opportunity to grow and live in your complications.

Shirt, $1,195, by Vince / Tank top (price upon request), by Salvatore Ferragamo

“I think the sooner you take responsibility for what reaction you want to get out of an audience, the better,” says Bowen, contemplatively, about the path forward for a boundary-pushing comedian trying to do work of any consequence. “There's this joke that Anna Drezen wrote for Melissa Villaseñor, where Melissa plays every teen-girl murder suspect on Law & Order. And there's this joke in there that is like, We stabbed her as a joke, but she took it the wrong way and started bleeding! If your intention is to stab someone, do it. You can't absolve yourself from the consequence of someone bleeding, you know?”

The briefest pause, and a redress.

“Does that metaphor track?”

Chris Gayomali is an articles editor at GQ.

A version of this story originally appeared in the April 2020 issue with the title “Live From New York, It's Bowen Yang.”

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Katie McCurdy

Styled by Ian Bradley

Grooming by Kumi Craig using La Mer at The Wall Group

Tailoring by Victoria Yee Howe