Bowen Yang Details His Near-Death Horseback Experience While Filming in Iceland

The ‘Saturday Night Live’ star was on a shoot for ‘Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens’ when the scary incident happened

Don’t expect Bowen Yang to ride a horse again any time soon.

The Saturday Night Live star, 32, revealed on the Aug. 2 episode of Las Culturistas, the podcast he co-hosts with Matt Rogers, that he had a near-death experience on horseback while filming Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens in Iceland.

“[I’ve] ridden a horse for camera,” Yang said on the podcast. “Guess what? This crew, and I love this crew, but this crew decided to have a drone, and of course the horse don’t know what the f— that is, and then I almost died.”

For Nora from Queens’ third season, Yang’s character Edmund goes to Iceland to locate his long-lost relatives, with his cousin Nora (played by Awkwafina) accompanying him on the trip. 

During the shoot for the Comedy Central sitcom, the drone unnerved Yang’s horse, according to the comedian.

“Even hundreds of yards away, these horses can clock,” he said. “They were spooked and then I almost [fell off]. I almost got bucked, and there was part of me, though, that was like, ‘This is a good way to go.'” 

Bowen Yang in ‘Nora from Queens’.

Comedy Central/ Youtube

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Along with the horse incident, Yang experienced another mishap while filming in the Scandinavian country. “The other narrative from Iceland was that I had a piece of used toilet paper — my own used toilet paper — stuck to my shoe and then everybody on set saw” he recalled, noting that he was walking with “a big brown on my pants.”

Yang and Rogers have been co-hosting Las Culturistas since 2016. The podcast, which delves into pop culture topics, was named Podcast of the Year at the 2023 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards.

In early July, Yang announced that he was stepping away from the podcast due to “bad bouts of depersonalization” — a psychological condition in which someone frequently feels like they’re having an out-of-body experience or sensing nothing is real.

Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty 

In an Instagram Story at the time, the Fire Island star wrote: “Taking a very short break from [Las Culturistas]. Bad bouts of depersonalization are f—ing me up bad, but I am doing my best to get better! Please take care, be soon.”

Just a few weeks after that announcement, Rogers gave an update about his podcasting partner during a chat on the On Display with Melissa Gorga podcast.

“What I really want everyone to know is that already things are better,” Rogers said. “Already, there’s more perspective and there’s going to be steps taken to get him to a healthier place because he knows he deserves that.”

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New episodes of Las Culturistas, which is produced by iHeartRadio, drop Wednesdays.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education