Bowen Yang is tired of impersonating J.D. Vance on Saturday Night Live.
The Wicked actor first played the vice president of the United States in September 2024 — a mere two months before Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. On Thursday, Yang appeared on The Daily Show and said that despite playing the character for less than a year, he would be more than happy if Lorne Michaels recast the role of the Republican politician on SNL.
“Loren asked me [to play Vance] and, I said, ‘Please, please, please don’t make me do this,’” Yang explained to host Desi Lydic. “I really do my best with him, but every time I have to play him, I go to Lorne and I say, ‘You can do a buyback, You don’t have to stick with me.’”
The actor and comedian offered the SNL creator a few options for his replacement: “Please reach out to Zach Galifianakis. Please reach out to Taran Killam. But no, that’s my charge.” Yang said he’s found it “challenging” to portray the vp, partly because of Vance’s accent.
“You know what, I worked with an accent coach,” he revealed. “We had to find the middle between Appalachian and Ohio. We really had to find the right [accent]. I was like, I don’t want to screw this up.”
At the beginning of the live sketch comedy show’s 50th season, Yang debuted the role of Vance alongside James Austin Johnson as Trump, Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, Dana Carvey as Joe Biden and Andy Samberg as Douglas Emhoff.
Aside from his Vance’s dialect, Yang said he had “such an uphill battle” playing Trump’s right-hand man because he anticipated that “everyone in America is going to be like, ‘This Asian guy is playing that guy?’”
He added, “I was like, I really got to nail this down. And I’m just telling you guys, I’m doing my best.”
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