Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | August 12, 2025
Bowen Yang appeared this week on what may be one of the few remaining episodes of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, and it was, more than most, a full-on lovefest. Maron is clearly a fan of Yang’s, and Yang — well-acquainted with the show — is just as much a fan of Maron. The two first met through Lily Gladstone, for whom they share a mutual fondness.
Yang also shared a story about how Gladstone calls him her “star sibling” because Gladstone’s mother — who once conceived a baby named August who did not come to term — believes Yang is, in some way, August reincarnated.
Much of the conversation centered on Yang’s upbringing, his time on SNL, and his concern that the current administration might target James Austin Johnson. But toward the end of the podcast, Maron unexpectedly brought up Yang’s supposed “reconciliation” with Shane Gillis.
For context: Yang, Gillis, and Chloe Fineman were all hired by SNL in the same year. Soon after, a series of old podcast clips surfaced in which Gillis made racist jokes, including Asian slurs. The backlash was swift, and Gillis was fired just days later.
After Yang praised Lorne Michaels for the “cross section of comedy” now on SNL, Maron asked, “So, the reconciliation with Shane? Is that real? What are the real feelings between the two of you?”
“The real feelings are that we have nothing in common, but there’s a mutual sort of respect—from afar,” Yang said. He added that he still feels some trauma from “being implicated in one of these big national stories about cancel culture. I’m still working through that.”
“He and I had, in that weekend, a moment of connection just to be like, ‘Hey. Are you OK? This is crazy.’”
Yang explained that after learning he’d been hired, he took a nap and woke up to his agent telling him about the controversy. “My first instinct,” he said, “was to call him. I just needed to check in to see where he was.”
There was no reconciliation, exactly. “We’re two comedians. I don’t know your comedy. He could say the same for me. These are just human beings,” Yang said.
Gillis returned the call two days later, and the exchange was cordial. “He called me back and was like, ‘Hey. This is crazy. How are you doing? I’m so sorry.’”
Yang responded, “We can make this work. I’m here for you, question mark? And I’ll see you at work.”
“At that point, I think he knew something I didn’t,” Yang said. “He just said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and we hung up, because I think he’d already been told he wasn’t going to be on the show.”
“There was nothing to reconcile. Both of us just had to navigate being used. I think there was an effort to recruit people to one side or the other, like, ‘If you like this guy, this is what you stand for, and if you like that guy, that’s what you stand for.’ But both of us are more dimensional than that.”
And that’s where Yang left it.
