“Saturday Night Live” fan favorite Bowen Yang announced on Instagram that he is departing the show after tonight’s episode hosted by his “Wicked” co-star Ariana Grande.
“I loved working at SNL, and most of all i loved the people,” he wrote.
Yang went on to express gratitude to the show and everyone involved.
“i’m grateful for every minute of my time there,” he said.
“thank you to ari for sending me off in the dreamiest way i could imagine,” he later added.
The comedian joined the show as a writer in 2018 during its 44th season. He was added to the cast in 2019, becoming the show’s first Asian cast member.
He quickly became one of the show’s breakout stars, appearing in multiple sketches per episode. His popular imitations included Rep. George Santos, photographer Fran Lebowitz and “Brat” artist Charli XCX. He also cosplayed as viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng and the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
“SNL” airs on NBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which is also the parent company of NBC News.
In a promo for Saturday’s episode that was posted to social media on Thursday, Yang appears alongside musical artist Cher and host Ariana Grande, with whom he worked on “Wicked.”
“SNL” marked a major milestone earlier this year with a star-studded 50th anniversary special, which aired on NBC and Peacock in February.
The long-running Lorne Michaels-helmed sketch comedy show underwent another routine shake-up recently, with several cast members, including Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow and Emil Wakim, exiting earlier this year.
Yang, who co-hosts a popular podcast called “Las Culturistas” with comedian and actor Matt Rogers, said in September that he had spoken to Michaels about possibly leaving, but decided not to.
“I’ve always gone by the instinct of, do I have more to do? And I feel like I do,” Yang said in an interview with People magazine published in September, when asked about Season 51. “Even Lorne and I talked about it, and Lorne was like, ‘You have more to do,’ and that means a lot, because I even confessed to him. I was like, ‘I feel the audience is maybe getting sick of me.’ And he was like, ‘That’s not true. There’s more for you to do. I need you.’”
At this year’s Emmys awards, held in September, Michaels addressed the recent cast changes.
“The show has always brought people in from different ages and different generations, and it’s how it revives itself,” Michaels told Entertainment Tonight in an interview on the red carpet. “It’s always hard when people leave but there’s a time for that and our audiences always stayed relatively young and more so now with TikTok, and change is good. And the people we’re bringing in I’m really excited about.”
