“It’s Actually 500 Jokes”: Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s Road to the Culture Awards

“I don’t think so, honey: Disrespect to the sprinkle cookie!” shouts Matt Rogers straight to camera. He’s flanked by his BFF and partner in podcasting Bowen Yang, who nods enthusiastically. He’s on a soap box, stumping for Real Housewives of New Jersey star Melissa Gorga’s new line of baked goods. “Even Bethenny, on her TikTok, reviewed the sprinkle cookie and she was like, ‘You know what? They’re not bad,’” he continues, punctuating his words with enthusiastic claps. “And that is a huge rave from Bethenny Frankel, which does not come easily. You’ve seen the way she is with some skin care out there.”

This, in a nutshell, is Las Culturistas—Rogers and Yang’s incredibly popular podcast, produced by Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio. The pair has an uncanny knack for taking disparate things—see Gorga’s sprinkle cookies, Frankel’s TikTok—and putting them in comedic conversation with each other. Rogers and Yang, who met as freshmen at NYU in the aughts, have been perfecting this formula since launching Las Culturistas on the Forever Dog network in 2016.

The podcast predates either of their ascents in Hollywood. These days, Yang, 34, has five Emmy nominations under his belt as a Saturday Night Live breakout star, and a plum role in Wicked. Rogers, 35, has made memorable supporting turns on comedy series like I Love That for You and No Good Deed, as well as his touring musical comedy special, Have You Heard of Christmas?, streaming on Paramount+ Premium. Although their careers have gone down separate paths, they’ve also continuously intersected—whether by starring together in the Emmy-nominated gay romantic comedy Fire Island or appearing as a bickering couple on Amazon Prime’s Overcompensating.

Throughout it all, Las Culturistas has remained the tie that binds the two best friends—and what connects them to their legion of fans, whom they affectionately call “Readers, Kayteighs, Publicists, Finalists, and Kyles.” The show is a press tour must-stop for A-list talent like Mariah Carey and Chappell Roan. Recent guests have included everyone from Sarah Jessica Parker to Michelle Obama, all of whom have listened to Yang and Rogers rattle off “rules of culture” and answered the podcast’s animating question: “What was the culture that made you say culture was for you?” Las Culturistas won podcast of the year at the iHeartPodcast Awards in March, and was recently named one of Time’s 100 best podcasts of all time.

This year, the loyal RKPFKs are in for a special treat. The Las Culturistas Culture Awards, Rogers and Yang’s bespoke comedy show that masquerades as an awards ceremony, will be broadcast on Bravo on August 5 at 9 p.m. and will be streaming the next day on Peacock. While it’s the fourth edition of their faux-awards extravaganza, this is also the first time Yang and Rogers are putting the Culture Awards on television. Suffice it to say, they’re feeling the pressure.

“I had to wake up and take a breath and just strap in,” Yang tells me. Rogers’s nerves are manifesting in a more visceral way. “I wake up my eyes and my first instinct is, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’” he says. “I do have that thing in the morning where I’m like, ‘Ah!’”

Yang steps in as a supportive friend: “You’re having an anxiety moment. But you’re working through it by acknowledging the state.”

For all their similarities as gay millennials in their mid 30s, Yang and Rogers fill separate niches. Yang, who graduated NYU with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, is more cerebral, and often more reserved, while Rogers—a powder keg of personality from Long Island with seemingly no off-switch—is more emotional. (He has a classic refrain on the podcast: “I don’t know my words, but I do know my heart.”) Of course this manifests in their approach to work and how they deal with pressure. “I feel like I have very anxious responses to stress, and Bowen can have more depressive responses to stress,” says Rogers. “Those two things interact in interesting ways. It’s been an emotional few weeks.”

When I arrive at Jack Studios in Chelsea, the vibe is anything but depressed. The duo is recording promo for their awards show, recreating their iconic final podcast segment, “I Don’t Think So, Honey!” in which guests rant about something in culture that irks them for one full minute. (Iconic renditions include Tina Fey’s “Bowen Yang giving his real opinions about movies on this podcast” and comedian Aaron Jackson’s now classic “going to church on Sunday and Wednesday.”) They’re a little less than three weeks away from showtime at a glitzy, star-studded ceremony hosted at LA’s Orpheum Theatre. The telecast tapes on July 17, weeks before airing on Bravo—a far cry from the basements and bars where Yang and Rogers cut their teeth as 20-somethings trying to break into the comedy business.

“I still don’t think I am famous,” says Rogers after the promo shoot. “I guess I notice a change. But famous is such a weird word now anyway. I think that’s part of why the Culture Awards are so great, because you can expect to see people that you can’t believe how famous they are next to someone you’ve never heard of.”

Yang can’t help adding a punch line: “And famous is such a weird word because the o is kind of silent.”

Ever the Abbott to Yang’s Costello, Rogers pipes in. “And there really should be a y after the a. It should be spelled f-a-y-m-u-s. And that’s rule of culture number six.”

The Culture Awards started off as a bit. They became a live event only after Lincoln Center asked Yang to program a show for its Summer for the City series in 2022. The free, outdoor event was such a success that Lincoln Center brought them back the following summer—with many fans turned away due to spatial constraints. In 2024, the show moved to Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre and became a ticketed event—selling out and leaving some fans in the cold.

“Everyone that wants to be able to see it for sure is going to be able to see it this year. That’s the coolest thing,” says Rogers. “You hear about so many people that are bummed because they can’t make it to New York, or they waited outside for a long time back when it was free and they didn’t get in. Or last year they didn’t get a ticket because we did it in a theater, and there were only so many seats. It’s not something you can do more than once because of the nature of what it is.”

“We’ve done this three times already live,” says Yang. “Now we just get to have a jib”—a camera on a moving crane—“in the room. You know what I mean?”

Taking the Culture Awards to new, televised heights has required a lot more personnel. “Last year, this was, like, six people,” says producer Lauren Mandel, surveying the room. Now, no less than 70 people are on site assisting with the shoot. Outside of the Culture Awards, Mandel has also produced the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert as well as Sabrina Carpenter’s Netflix Christmas special. But Yang and Rogers hold a special place in her heart. “They keep making me nearly cry,” she says.

Previous Culture Awards have been stacked with alt-comedy royalty and frequent Las Culturistas guests like Patti Harrison, Tony winner Cole Escola, Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, as well as celebrities like Julia Fox, Mandy Moore, and Taylor Swift—who accepted the award for Best Tayla Swiff via video message, thanking Yang and Rogers for finally spelling her name right. Like Swift’s response, the categories are always tongue in cheek—the Little Mix Award for Being Absolutely Fierce Boots or the Cate Blanchett Award for Good Acting—lovingly parodying the very concept of an awards show. (Blanchett also won, and also accepted her award via video message.)

“This show is a celebration of the high and the low, and the fact that it’s all worthy of celebration,” says Rogers. “You can be someone who watches Bravo, or you can be someone whose favorite movie is Jurassic Park.”

“There are no borders,” Yang says.

The show also isn’t interested in aping any specific Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, or Tony ceremonies from days of yore. “We’re not going for references like, ‘This is Jackson Maine pissing his pants in A Star Is Born.’ ‘This is Adele Dazeem,’” says Yang. “The essence that we’re trying to capture is the spirit of all awards shows, good or bad, which is this diffused chaos.”

The pair attended this year’s Oscars, which was ultimately a bit demystifying. “Even though I was just Bowen’s date, I was in the room and I was like, ‘Wow, I got here,’” says Rogers. “And you know what? It’s just a show. It’s next to a Shake Shack.”

This year’s expanded Culture Awards hope to provide something for everyone—the die-hard Las Cultch fans, the reality TV fans, the theater geeks, the theme park freaks, the pop stans, and, hopefully, those less steeped in the ins and outs of culture. But locking down top-tier talent for an event of this scale is never a walk in the park. “Miss Piggy canceled,” says Yang with a disappointed sigh. That’s not a joke: The famed pig puppet was actually supposed to appear on the show. “We are just going to be flexible with that, and we’re going to figure out another thing.”

For another awards show, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But it’s a blow for the Culture Awards, because Yang, Rogers, and their writing team—SNL supervising writer Celeste Yim and former SNL writing supervisor Sudi Green—have been meeting daily to craft jokes and bits specific to the talent confirmed to attend. “It’s hard because there’s a hundred categories and five nominees in each category. So it’s actually 500 jokes,” says Rogers.

The ever-changing lineup has led to “a flare-up of anxiety” for Yang. But he’s leaning on lessons he’s learned from his six seasons on Saturday Night Live. “Working at a place like SNL, I think we understand…why wallow in that? I feel like Matt has been so amenable to that process, to those changes, even though it does feel so perturbing.”

Three weeks out, they’ve confirmed an enviable roster—if everything goes to plan. As of now, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kristen Wiig, Gabby Windey, Kenan Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Mindy Kaling, and Dylan Efron are all scheduled to appear. As they’re driven to their next engagement, Yang and Rogers reminisce about I Don’t Think So, Honey! Live—a Las Culturistas show in which 50 comedians did their take on that segment at venues across the US and Canada. The series helped catapult the career of comedians and performers like Ayo Edebiri, Rachel Sennott, and Meg Stalter, while also establishing the Las Culturistas cinematic universe—a web that includes Catherine Cohen and Pat Regan of Seek Treatment and George Civeris and Sam Taggart of StraightioLab.

“The live-event thing didn’t die with ‘I Don’t Think So, Honey!,’ which became logistically unfeasible,” says Rogers, about when Yang booked SNL. “It lives on with the Culture Awards.” The old live show also taught them a valuable lesson. “This is part of our training,” says Yang. “Our manager reminded us—she was like, ‘You guys took classes and performed when there were less people in the audience than there were onstage.’”

Although Bravo is a long way from Brooklyn venue the Bell House, Yang and Rogers feel prepared for this moment. “It’s lucky when scrappiness in one time and place ends up very naturally becoming a skill,” says Yang. “We’re not scrappy anymore, even though it feels like Matt and I are still boots on the ground. Scrappiness to skill: That is the natural progression of things, if you’re lucky enough.”

Weeks have passed, and I’m on Zoom with Yang and Rogers three days before the taping of the Culture Awards. “We just found out today that we are going to be able to finally reveal Stitch’s pronouns,” Rogers excitedly tells me. “So that was a huge victory for the queer community, and also ourselves.”

Now that they’re operating on a grander scale, all their jokes have more hoops to jump through. Collaborating with Peacock, NBCUniversal, and Bravo has been “culture-award-worthy,” claims Rogers, although sometimes they find themselves second-guessing what can ultimately make it to air. “The red tape was coming from inside the house the whole time,” says Yang about the Lilo & Stitch joke. “I found myself saying the other day, ‘If I was Disney legal, would I sue us?’” says Rogers. “I was really trying to put my lawyer hat on. I was like, ‘You know what? No, they have no case. I dare them.’” He pauses. “Do not print that I dared Disney to sue us.”

Pending any incoming cease and desists, there are approximately 72 hours until the big show. “I would call us 97% set,” says Rogers, with the caveat that they are still waiting for a few A-listers to officially confirm their participation. “This is the week where it all starts to congeal,” says Yang. “It feels like that dental mold that hardens within seconds. We’re getting into the double-digit hours. We’re kind of figuring it out as we go, but it’s happening.”

Of course, there are also factors outside of their control. After the show’s nominations announcement went live, journalist and former Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz took the Culture Awards to task for one specific category: the Pop Crave Award for Excellence in Journalism. The nominees include Amelia Dimoldenberg, host of the viral YouTube interview show Chicken Shop Date—a series Lorenz called “straight up not journalism,” sparking a day’s worth of discourse.

While neither Yang nor Rogers is active on X, someone sent Yang a screenshot of the brouhaha. “This is my media-literacy faux pas. I didn’t even read who it was from,” he says. “I did not see that it was Taylor Lorenz. And so I was just like, ‘Okay, this is just clearly a person who doesn’t get it.’”

Lorenz eventually got the joke. She deleted her message, then posted, “It happened to me: I did a bad tweet.” Yang responded through his personal Instagram account, @fayedunaway: “Diva i love u!!!!” he wrote to her on Instagram. “U r of course nominated next year!!!”

“This is what I’m going to say: Taylor Lorenz had a bad day, and sometimes you clown yourself on the internet,” says Rogers. “It happens to everybody. My heart broke for her because her DMs could not have been kind. I hope she’s a fan, like she said. It was a little bit of an interesting way to go about being a fan. But maybe we all learn from it, and we kiss her on the forehead, and say, ‘Bless.’”

The mini controversy did bring up a question that Yang and Rogers have to wrestle with as the Las Culturistas tent expands: What happens when a podcast filled with in-jokes designed for people on the same wavelength officially goes mainstream?

“I think if we provide people anything, whether it’s through the podcast or this show every year, it resembles this feeling of like, ‘Oh, I’m with people who—quote, unquote—get it. I speak the language of this group of people,’” says Yang. “There’s something arch and playful that I think you either get it or you don’t. And it seems like the people who do end up getting it stick around a while because they like it. Hopefully.”

Rogers, for one, isn’t worried about bringing more people into the fold. “It’s really important to Bowen and I that Las Culturistas is a safe space,” says Rogers. “Everyone’s invited into our safe space. This is a place of fun. This is a place of looking at the culture and pointing and laughing. The Culture Awards are taking back this idea of what needs to meet a certain rubric to be celebrated.”

It’s Friday, July 25. The Culture Awards have come and gone. I’m on Zoom with Rogers while Yang vacations with his family in China.

“It felt like my wedding, honestly,” says Rogers of the ceremony. “The after-party, the vibes were through the roof. Everyone was celebrating. Everyone worked so hard on it, and every department just outdid themselves. And so I’m really excited. It’s a 12 out of 10 version of what I thought it was going to be.”

He fondly recalls “crotch thrusting” in Jeff Goldblum’s face, retooling the show at the last minute to accommodate surprise musical guests, and sharing an emotional moment with Yang when all was said and done. “That’s my girl,” says Rogers. “I think that we did that, and I think that only we could have done it.”

Although the show went off without a hitch, a bit of red-carpet drama did spark another tempest in a teapot. As Vulture filmed a video, Oscar winner and Freakier Friday star Jamie Lee Curtis interrupted Yang and Rogers—telling them to be quiet and demanding that they “bring the whole…thing down.” Once again, a certain corner of the internet was up in arms, defending their beloved Las Culturistas hosts against a perceived slight.

Curtis’s scolding was eerily reminiscent of Lorenz’s public shaming. Again, she seemed to be someone who simply didn’t get it.

“I just can’t live in a world where anything that happens on the Las Culturistas purple carpet at the Culture Awards is taken seriously,” Rogers says of the incident. “We presented the award for Best Word to Scream, so I really think that sets a certain vibe. I am absolutely thrilled that the mainstream media and the public want to indulge in a reality where we’re in a feud with Jamie Lee Curtis, but I can confirm that that is not the case.”

At this point, Rogers is still in awe of the fact that he and Yang were able to assemble a dream team of Oscar winners, Bravo stars, TV darlings, and comedy legends for their little shindig. “Jamie Lee was sitting next to Goldblum, was sitting next to Sarah Michelle Gellar, was sitting next to Keenan, was sitting next to Andy [Samberg], was sitting next to Allison Janney. Paige DeSorbo in the house. Law Roach in the building. All the Housewives, let’s go,” he says, in disbelief. “It was emotional for so many reasons because we had put so much into it. But then when I watch it afterwards, I’m hosting the show with my best friend that has all my heroes in it.”

It proves how far Yang and Rogers have come since they were deemed too “niche” by the industry. “Back in the day, we used to be told all the time,” says Rogers. “We’d pitch web series, and for us it would be a broad idea. And they’d be like, ‘Oh, it feels niche.’” But now, it looks like the niche have inherited the earth.