Bowen Yang is back at “Saturday Night Live“!
The former “SNL” cast member, who left the show in 2025, made a surprise return in the Nov. 14 cold open to play former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
In the sketch, host John Mulaney played a CIA official who gathered a group of prominent tech billionaires together to impress upon them that if a woman is interested in them, it’s probably because she’s a spy for a foreign government. Huang resigned this week amid revelations he had an extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
The meeting consisted of Peter Thiel (played by James Austin Johnson), Sam Altman (Ben Marshall), Dario Amodei (Jane Wickline), Mark Zuckerberg (Andrew Dismukes) and Elon Musk (Jeremy Culhane).
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Bowen Yang attends “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” at Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 14, 2025, in New York City.
“We are here to discuss an extremely sensitive matter of national security,” Mulaney’s character said. “America needs you to learn the difference between a woman who would actually want to have sex with you and a woman who is clearly a spy.”
He went on to tell the group it must be “disorienting” for them to “go from these bug-eyed little weirdos to being gods” and showed a Venn diagram illustrating zero overlap between “beautiful women” and “people who would be interested in your shared opinions and interests,” so “if someone is both of these things, they are a spy!”
The sketch built up to Mulaney turning the meeting over to someone “who learned this lesson the hard way,” with Yang’s Huang entering to applause.
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“It’s me, Jensen ‘Hide Your Wife’ Huang,” Yang’s character said. “Ladies, when you invite Jensen over, you know what’s about to go down: The S&P 500. That’s right, I’m into BDSM: Breaking Da Stock Market.”
This was Yang’s first time on “SNL” since he departed the show’s cast in an emotional farewell episode last December.
The cold open also slipped in references to the two other biggest news stories of the week: The FAA’s nationwide ground stop and the Microsoft Outlook outage. When Johnson’s Thiel defensively asked Mulaney to “name one time technology has let us down,” Mulaney’s character said, “Uh, yesterday when every plane in America was grounded.” Asked to name another time, he cited “the day before that, when Microsoft Outlook went dark.”
Trump was not featured in the sketch, making the cold open a rare one that didn’t parody the president. It came a week after the post-midterms cold open featured James Talarico popping up to comment on how the Trump-themed cold opens on “SNL” have gotten stale.
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Mulaney hosted the Nov. 14 episode of “SNL,” his seventh time in the gig at Studio 8H, with Phoebe Bridgers serving as musical guest.
Yang made another appearance later in the show in “The Little Park of Horrors,” the latest of Mulaney’s recurring musical parodies. This version was centered on horse-drawn carriages in New York City, and Yang showed up as Mary Todd Lincoln, a role he’s playing on Broadway through January in “Oh, Mary!” He returned one more time to join Mulaney on stage for goodnights.
On “Weekend Update,” the Huang affair scandal opened the segment, with anchor Colin Jost joking that the FAA grounding all U.S. flights made the former Nvidia CEO say, “Oh, thank God, a different news story!”
“Thousands of flights were canceled, tens of thousands of flights have been delayed. Well, well, well, suddenly ferry transportation, suddenly it’s looking pretty reliable,” Jost joked, referencing his and Pete Davidson’s purchase of a decommissioned Staten Island ferry.
When is ‘SNL’ returning?
“SNL” is taking a few weeks off, with the next episode scheduled to air on Dec. 5. Amanda Seyfried will host the show, making her “SNL” hosting debut, with musical guest Don Toliver.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bowen Yang makes surprise ‘SNL’ return as Jensen Huang in cold open
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