Yesterday was a very busy Saturday night for former SNL cast member Bowen Yang. The star gave two lead performances on his Broadway show Oh Mary!, and then had to rush over to 30 Rockefeller Plaza for SNL cold open.
On his Instagram page, Yang revealed that his schedule was so tight he couldn’t even make it to the show’s dress rehearsal. During the show’s dress cold open, Yang’s role (as scandal-plagued Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang) was taken instead by cast member Sarah Sherman.
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Sherman performed the sketch with a giant sign on her chest labeled “Bowen Yang,” so that the dress rehearsal audience would understand what the intention was.
After Yang performed in the show’s cold open, he had to get back into his Mary Todd costume for another sketch. This sketch, simply labeled “Central Park Horse & Carriage Ride” on the show’s YouTube page, is part of a long-running tradition on the show for whenever John Mulaney hosts; it covers a niche New York City topic through a series of hit Broadway song parodies.
Yang performed a parody of Dreamgirls’ “And I Am Telling You,” except here he was singing about the inconveniences New Jersey drivers have to deal with when trying to leave Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel.
Yang shared a clip on Instagram of him and the SNL cast members celebrating and leaving the stage after the cold open. He also shared a post from the NBC SNL Instagram page of him performing on the show as Mary Todd:
The episode marks Yang’s first time back on the show since he left in December 2025. A lot of fans suspected he’d return after the Jensen Huang scandal hit, but there was some mystery over whether the show would pick one-time host Simu Liu instead.
Liu had posted on X earlier in the week, “I have waited my entire life to be able to play a real life man embroiled in scandal on SNL.” Unfortunately, it seems like the Shang-Chi star will have to wait a little longer.