WHY BOWEN YANG SAYS KISSING ARIANA GRANDE ON SNL WAS AN "INTERESTING SENSATION"
Ariana Grande hosted Saturday Night Live Season 50, Episode 3 in October 2024, and one of her funniest sketches featured an unhinged kiss between the "Yes, And?" singer and Repertory Player Bowen Yang. In the sketch, titled "Charades with Mom," Grande plays a mother (Diane) meeting her son's boyfriend, played by Yang, for the first time. Their friendly game of charades turns hilariously competitive after Yang's character brags to Diane about winning the first round. Turns out, Diane doesn't like to lose — and she lets Yang's character know that through some seriously cut-throat digs.
Things escalate from there. One second, Yang's character and Diane are brawling. The next, they're kissing, which sent the audience into full hysterics.
Bowen and Grande recently laughed about the sketch in a lie detector test video for Vanity Fair while promoting Wicked: For Good, in which they both star. (The movie hits theaters November 21, 2025.)
"I was dropped in," Yang said about the sketch, telling Grande, "And so were you! I'm so biased, [but it's] one of my favorite performances of you."
"Did you enjoy it? Kissing me?" Grande followed up with a grin. Yang's response? "It was the only time I kissed someone where a crowd screamed in horror, so I think I liked it. It was the only time I've gotten positive or just, like, exclamatory feedback on a kiss. So, yeah, sure. That's an interesting sensation. I recommend that to everyone."
"You think I was a good kisser?" Grande then asked cheekily, to which Yang laughed and admitted, "Yeah. You were really good."
RELATED: Bowen Yang's Wicked Blind Audition on The Voice Deserved Way More Chair Turns
Is Bowen Yang still on SNL?
Yes! Yang is in the current Season 51 cast of Saturday Night Live as a Repertory Player. He also plays one of Glinda's (Grande) sidekicks in both Wicked movies, and the one-two punch of these jobs carries tremendous sentimental value for him.
RELATED: Bowen Yang Flexed an SNL-Honed Talent on Day Drinking with Seth Meyers & Matt Rogers
While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Yang revealed the emotional way SNL was part of his first screening of 2024's Wicked. "I saw it for the first time with people at SNL when [Grande] came to host, they did a screening for all of us," he said. "...My first trip to New York City...I begged my parents to go to the Gershwin Theater [where the Broadway show of Wicked lives]. We couldn’t afford tickets, but I begged them to go so I could touch the glass and look at the lobby and see what it was like inside. And the same day, we came to 30 Rock, we came here [for] the studio tour at SNL, and I was like, I got to be in both of those things…sometimes the universe makes it so easy. I was like, I have to see it with my SNL family."
2025-11-12T20:42:43Z