Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang is opening up about the “painful and detrimental” experience of going to conversion therapy.
In a preview for NBC’s Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist, Yang and the Sunday Today host discussed how The Wedding Banquet actor was put into gay conversion therapy by his parents when he was a teenager. “I ‘came out’ in a sense that my parents just sort of stumbled upon something, and they were like ‘Oh, we didn’t realize this is what we were dealing with,’” Yang told Willie Geist in the video preview.
Yang said his parents didn’t know how to handle the situation. “I give them a lot of grace for that because they just had no context for it,” he said.
The comedian and actor explained that he was given an ultimatum by his parents that if he went to conversion therapy, he could then go to New York University and live with his older sister. “Those poor people did not realize that that’s one of the gayest schools in the country,” Yang joked, adding that the only way he could leave Denver was if he went to conversion therapy.
“I kind of played along, and I kind of just humored them and myself into seeing what it was,” the Las Culturistas podcast host said. ang said at the time he didn’t realize how painful the situation would be, but that he’s had a large amount of healing since then.
Yang has opened about his experience multiple times in the past. The podcaster recently spoke about it with his co-host Matt Rogers and guest Lady Gaga after explaining how important the latter’s music was in his own queer identity journey. “I think I had come out of the closet again when ‘Born This Way’ came out because I went to conversion therapy, obviously did not work out,” he said on the podcast.
Yang’s full Sunday Sitdown episode is expected to air on April 13.