Bowen Yang returns to ‘SNL' to play ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Yang also took his role as Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” off Broadway for a musical sketch set in Central Park.
by Dennis Romero | NBC News · 5 NBCDFWFormer “Saturday Night Live” repertory player and writer Bowen Yang returned to help open the show this weekend with his portrayal of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
In the cold open, the nation’s most-prominent tech-industry CEOs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, are at a CIA gathering devised to teach them how to identify when a woman may be duping them.
“America needs you to learn the difference between a woman who would actually want to have sex with you and a woman who is clearly a spy,” said a CIA guide, portrayed by comedian John Mulaney, the night’s host.
Mulaney, a former “SNL” writer, used the story of Huang, who resigned from Nvidia on Thursday following reports that he had extramarital relationships, including one with a suspected spy for China.
“What do you think the lesson is here?” Mulaney asked.
Zuckerberg, portrayed by Andrew Dismukes, answered: “Never date a human woman.”
Mulaney dismissed the response and that of a few of the other tech titans in the room, prompting PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, portrayed by James Austin Johnson, to defend the group.
“Show us some respect,” he said. “We do a lot for this country. Name one time technology has let us down.”
Mulaney answered by mentioning Friday’s nationwide flight ground stop and Thursday’s global Microsoft glitch.
He tried to empathize, however, noting that it’s a rare time in human history when men “as pale and as strange as you” even survive, let alone possess “all the world’s wealth and power.”
Mulaney asked the group to remember the people they dated before they were rich and famous. “Now all of a sudden someone very beautiful is interested in you. Why do you think that might be?” he said.
Zuckerberg chimed in. “Because she’s comforted by my Meta glasses recording her at all times.”
“No,” Mulaney said.
He later introduces someone “who learned this lesson the hard way.”
Enter Huang.
“It’s me, Jensen ‘Hide Your Wife’ Huang,” Yang said.
He explained that he’s into BDSM — “breakin’ da stock market” — and urged the men not to be like him.
“Women don’t like guys like us,” he said. “That’s how we became guys like us.”
Yang appeared in a subsequent sketch, “Little Park of Horrors,” a spoof of Broadway musicals, that centered on the city outlawing horse-drawn carriages and the two men (Marcello Hernández and Kam Patterson) who want to ride in one.
Eventually realizing the dangers and limitations, the pair opt for a vehicle ride in the Lincoln Tunnel only to be confronted by Yang’s Mary Todd Lincoln, who sang about the pitfalls of such a subterranean journey.
“No way it’s taking less than two hours,” Lincoln sang. “ ... And it won’t be for free. I’m sayin,’ I’m sayin’ that you and you and you — you’re going to pay me.”
A fan favorite, Yang started as a writer in 2018 and joined the cast the next year. He left “SNL” in December 2025, and made his Broadway debut in September as Lincoln in playwright Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!”
The night’s musical guest was Phoebe Bridgers.
“SNL” airs on NBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which is also the parent company of NBC News.