Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang took aim at Vice President JD Vance on The View this week.
Yang joined the show to discuss his upcoming film The Wedding Banquet. But the show’s co-hosts were eager to hear about his recent experience playing the VP on SNL. Yang has played Vance on and off for months, including a recent cold open spoof of the Signal group chat scandal.
While discussing his portrayal of the vice president, Yang quipped that he worked with a coach to get the accent “somewhere between Ohio and Appalachia.”
As the panel was celebrating him, telling him he “nailed it,” Yang said: “Look, the guy’s a pope killer.” Yang was referring to the fact that Vance’s Easter Sunday meeting with Pope Francis just hours before he died on Monday aged 88.
The panel — and audience — immediately burst out in laughter. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg turned away from the cameras to hide her reaction while her co-host, Sunny Hostin, looked stunned.
“Someone had to say it!” Yang added.
Joy Behar was quick to explain: “He doesn’t mean it literally. He’s talking spiritually.”
Hostin chimed in, “It’s just comedy!”
Earlier in the segment, Sara Haines asked Yang about the rumor that he didn’t want to play Vance on the sketch comedy show.
“I just thought there would be better people for it,” Yang responded. “It was my impostor syndrome. I was like, there are better people for this.”
Yang, the first Asian American cast members in the history of SNL, has been open about his desire to have someone else take on the vice president’s portrayal.
“I have a serviceable JD Vance, but I was like, you know what, this is a charge that I don’t take lightly,” he previously shared with NBC News. “Like, I want to make it pop as best as I can. I’ve been very lucky to play political figures on that show.”
Yang’s comments on The View come just days after Vance became one of the last people to see Pope Francis alive.
When asked about his Vatican meeting with the late pontiff by reporters during his subsequent trip to India., Vance said he’d “thought a lot about that.
“I mean, it’s pretty crazy, actually,” Vance continued. “And obviously, when I saw him, I didn’t know that he had less than 24 hours still on this earth.
“I think it was a great blessing. But, you know, he saw a lot of people. I think he affected a lot of lives. And I try to just remember that I was lucky that I got to shake his hand and tell him that I pray for him every day because I did and I do.”
