Bowen Yang says he once attended conversion therapy just so he could end up at the “gayest school in the country” … and the story from his youth actually has a pretty funny plot twist.
The ‘SNL’ alum sat down with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on their “Smartless” podcast and recalled his experience … explaining he was “discovered to be gay” at 17 years old, when he forgot to close a chat window on the family computer.
Bowen said his parents were “sobbing at the dinner table every day” and eventually offered up an ultimatum … he could live with them and go to a state school in Colorado or go to school with his sister at NYU, if he agreed to go to conversion therapy.
It’s ironic … Bowen says NYU was “the gayest school in the country.”
He claims he spent 8 weeks seeing a “quack” in Colorado Springs who tried to convince him that any time he was attracted to a guy it was because he was “miserable” or “in pain.”
In the last session, the specialist tells Bowen an anecdote about one of his former patients who caught a waiter making eyes at him in a Denny’s … the specialist accidentally slips into first person, telling Bowen, “And then I was like, ‘Am I really going to have sex with this person?’ And then I did.”
Bowen says the man didn’t catch himself shifting into the first person until it was too late.
The comedian’s got a lot more wisecracks here … so check out the audio.