SNL and Wicked star Bowen Yang to give career talk in London at BFI Flare

Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang is set to appear in front of a live audience in London to deliver a talk about his career and new feature film The Wedding Banquet later this month.

The event has been announced by BFI Flare as part of its upcoming 39th edition. The film festival, which is Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ film festival, is due to open on 19 March with a screening of The Wedding Banquet, which also stars Killers of the Flower Moon actress Lily Gladstone.

Yang will take to the stage the following day on 20 March at BFI Southbank, to speak about his varied career which has seen him graduate from writer to on-air cast member on SNL, as well as featuring in major films including Wicked, the Billy Eichner gay comedy Bros, and the hit romcom Fire Island on which he first collaborated with The Wedding Banquet director Andrew Ahn.

The comedian is also known to many as one half of the hit culture podcast Las Culturistas which he co-hosts with Matt Rogers. The popular podcast has grown exponentially in recent years, in part thanks to guest appearances from major stars such as Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga who is set to appear in an upcoming episode to speak about her new album MAYHEM.

The Wedding Banquet is a remake of the 1983 dramedy of the same name, although Ahn’s reinterpretation will include a number of differences, including the addition of a lesbian couple at the centre of the plot who are struggling to conceive via IVF. One of the women is approached by her closeted gay co-worker who offers to fund another round of the fertility treatment for the couple if she will agree to marry him so that he can obtain a green card to stay in the US. But when his grandmother arrives unannounced from Korea to organise a full blown wedding extraganza for the ‘happy couple’ – you guessed it – mayhem ensues!

Tickets to Yang’s ‘Screen Talk’ event on 20 March are available to purchase now via the BFI Flare website here.