Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang has apologised to Ariana Grande for opening his mouth “too much” during a kissing scene in a recent sketch on the show.
Grande hosted the 12 October episode of the show, which featured musical performances from Stevie Nicks. It was the first time that the Wicked star had hosted SNL since 2016.
Among the sketches on the episode was a skit called “Charades with Mom,” Grande starred alongside Andrew Dismukes as the parents of Michael Longfellow who were meeting their son’s boyfriend, played by Yang, for the first time.
As the title of the sketch suggests, a game of charades soon starts but gets out of control and becomes competitive very quickly. Eventually, a fight breaks out between Grande and Yang’s characters but they soon make up and engage in an overly passionate kiss with each other.
Yang, who also stars in Wicked, has since apologised to the “One Last Time” singer for the kiss during the sketch, which he admitted he opened his mouth too much for.
On his Las Culturistas podcast, Yang told Grande, who was his guest: “Just to switch gears: I really have to apologise to you in person. I opened my mouth up too much when we kissed on SNL.”
The 31-year-old pop star said: “You absolutely did. I was shaking with laughter. No, no, no, not in a bad way! Not in a bad way — just in a disarming way.”
“I kissed you too much,” added Yang, to which Grande replied, “You know what? That’s okay. … We were dropped in, and it felt like what these people needed at that time. It felt like what these characters required, and I’m all for it.”
Grande also revealed that the kiss wasn’t originally scripted but had the idea to add it after rehearsals. “I didn’t say anything because I was like, ‘Oh, everyone’s gonna think I’m absolutely insane and too comfortable,’’’ she said. “But I was like, ‘Oh, how funny would it be if we kissed at the end?’”
“And then Bowen texts me a few hours later and was like, ‘It’s totally fine if this is way too crazy, but we were talking and thought it would be so funny if we kissed at the end,’” Grande said. “And I was like, ‘Wow. I was thinking that.’”
“It was absolutely too open,” Grande later joked. “No, I’m kidding! For the characters, I think it was perfectly open.”
