Bowen Yang is so done playing JD Vance on Saturday Night Live.
The comedian told The Daily Show‘s Desi Lydic that he’s still begging SNL boss Lorne Michaels to reverse course on picking him for the role.
“Lorne asked me and I said, ‘Please, please, please, don’t make me do this,” because “I really find him challenging” to play, Yang said. “First of all, God’s honest truth, I really do my best with him. But every time I have to play him, I go to Lorne and I say, ‘You can do a buyback. You don’t have to stick with me.‘”
Yang first portrayed Vance during the show’s 50th season premiere in September—and he’s been vocal about his surprise that he was Michaels’ choice to play the Ohio-born then-vice presidential candidate. There was plenty of speculation about who would get the gig, and not many would have guessed it would be the show’s first Chinese-American cast member.
Yang revealed last year that he initially refused the role, complaining that Vance didn’t “have a personality” for him to work off of. He’s come around to some degree, he told Lydic Thursday, though he still thinks there are several players who could do it better.