“Save Kim’s Convenience!” Yang yelled over applause as SNL cut to commercial.New York Magazine’s Vulture has named him a “ Comedian You Should & Will Know. That segment, as it happened, ended with another Canadian shout-out. ![]() “The only people really who I can think of who have the responsibility, days after a national tragedy, to speak about it are news anchors, politicians … and people on SNL,” they say. It was never a question to not address the issue head-on, says Yim – who wrote what they would have wanted to see from the show’s breakout Asian star if they were watching from home in North York. The result was a poignant plea to allies to “Do better” that packed a punch without worrying too much about punchlines. It was Yim, who is Korean-Canadian, who gave Yang the advice: “Your only job is to not lie, is to tell the truth” in the segment. ![]() Ultimately, Yim’s most impactful contribution, however, was co-writing Yang’s Weekend Update segment, which frankly addressed anti-Asian hate in the wake of the Atlanta shooting that left six Asian-American women dead. The Canadian writer also worked on the Pride Month Song that went viral from the final episode of the season – in which Yang’s character sang about having a breakdown about a crush on the dance floor. Yim’s work on SNL this year included an It Gets Better campaign parody early in the season (starring Yang and Dan Levy of Schitt’s Creek), which hilariously highlighted the fact that queer people actually have life problems that don’t revolve around their sexuality. Yang’s performances even inspired a Slate thinkpiece on how he “has carved out a space for queer characters whose sexuality isn’t always a punchline” on the comedy program.īehind the scenes, Yim played a significant role in helping Yang to shine – often drawing on their own comedic interest in “complicating” the way queer people are depicted in mainstream or corporate culture, which can seem as off-kilter to them as Bonjour-Hi was for Québécois viewers. He’s referred to regularly as a “breakout star,” landing on the cover of Entertainment Weekly in May. Yim only found out that they had landed the gig after they had already moved back to Toronto – and had to un-sublet their room in Brooklyn.įlash-forward a year – and Yang has ended up being one of the most talked-about SNL cast members in his sophomore season (if you haven’t seen his turn as the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Google it now). Next stop for Yim, however, was NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where they got a “full ride” to take a MFA in Dramatic Writing – and ended up turning away from comedy and toward playwriting under the tutelage of big-name profs such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Lucas Hnath. Yim further cut their comedy chops during a Bob Curry Fellowship at Second City Toronto – and by writing for local troupe The Sketchersons’ long-running weekly SNL homage Sunday Night Live (which, it turns out, was good training for the real deal). ![]() “There were new lineups of women every single week and I remember just feeling like, ‘Okay, yeah, this will be possible for me.’” “One of the first big shows I wanted to be on and that ultimately ended up really taking me in was The Crimson Wave, which was run by Natalie Norman,” says Yim. While studying at the University of Toronto, Yim broke into the local stand-up and sketch scenes in the 2010s as shows specifically featuring female-identifying and non-binary or queer comics were starting to pop up at indie venues such as Bad Dog and the Comedy Bar. The stand-up comedian and writer, named one of “Canada’s Top 100 Notable Women” in Flare Magazine back in 2017, grew up in suburban North York going to Second City Toronto with their parents, watching videos of Richard Pryor and Steven Wright on YouTube, and avidly tuning into SNL. Yim is the latest in a long line of Canadians (and the first to use they/them pronouns) to break into the world of Saturday Night Live – the NBC show that was created and is still produced by Toronto-raised Lorne Michaels. “You know, of all the things I’ve ever written or wanted to write, I really wasn’t anticipating that this would be one of the most controversial,” Yim told The Globe and Mail, in a postseason debrief over Zoom. ![]() Yim still seems a bit stunned talking about the overwhelming reaction to that sketch – which had as its simple inspiration the fact that fellow SNL writer Sudi Green, who has family in Quebec, and Yang, who spent eight years living in a Montreal suburb as a kid, often greet each other with a hearty “Bonjour-hi.”
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