Bowen Yang calls for SNL to get a yearly allotment of "shits" and "fucks"

Calling the words "comedically powerful," Yang suggested that he and his colleagues at SNL "are so hampered in our comedy" by not using them.

By William Hughes  |  April 24, 2025 | 10:32pm
Bowen Yang on Saturday Night Live, Photo: NBC
TV News Bowen Yang
Bowen Yang calls for SNL to get a yearly allotment of

Over its 50 years of existence, Saturday Night Live has gone through numerous different eras in terms of taste, politics, and its approach to what works for a sketch or segment. But one rule has stayed fairly consistent across that half-century: If you drop a “shit” or a “fuck” on live television, you’re at least in danger of riding the Charles Rocket Memorial Rocket straight to the unemployment line. (This, despite the fact that the FCC is actually at least a little more lenient on this score for this particular show, given that the series exclusively airs past the watershed; “obscenity” is a no-go, but “indecency and profanity” both have wiggle room, as when cast member Ego Nwodim did a recent audience call-and-response bit on Weekend Update that caused a ton of audience members to yell “Shit!” on the east coast feed, to no apparent fine.)

One person is calling for this limitation to change, though: Cast member Bowen Yang, who took time recently on his podcast Las Culturistas to give an impassioned defense of allowing the cast to have, say, five shits, and five fucks, per season. Yang was speaking (alongside co-host Matt Rogers) to SNL alum Amy Poehler for the podcast’s “I Don’t Think So, Honey” segment, in which all participants get a minute to rant about a pop culture frustration of their choosing. Yang went off on SNL‘s own self-censorship, saying (per EW), “Standards and Practices, we should be able to say at least five shits and five fucks on SNL per season. “We are so hampered in our comedy at SNL by not being able to say shit and fuck,” he added, suggesting that the profanities are “comedically powerful” words, as well as vital and regular parts of modern speech. “It would make it so you’d be able to know this is the real world, not sketch reality,” he concluded, as his 60 seconds elapsed.

Poehler gamely played along with the bit, suggesting the show could institute an American Idol-esque voting system to determine how the shits and fucks were spent. She did drop back into a more serious comedy mindset to gently push back on the basic idea, though: “I do think there’s something fun about not being able to say it. That causes comedic tension, that’s fun. The air may be let out of that balloon when you do.”

 
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