Bowen Yang Is Sorry He’s Not Your Clown Today

In London, he was staying in King’s Cross, isolated in a hotel without his castmates. “This cannot sound anything but name-droppy,” he told me, “but Ariana Grande”—who plays Glinda—“was reaching out and going, ‘Are you O.K.? Come over! Let’s just watch a movie. Let’s get you better.’ She was there for me in a true way.” Grande told me that although she found Yang’s double duty “badass and incredible,” it was “also a little worrisome. I understand what it feels like to travel back and forth so often and then have to perform the next day, with no time for your body or mind to figure out what’s going on, and it is incredibly hard and unusual. So I just wanted to make sure he had an ear and a hug and the support he needed.” It was not lost on Yang that the Good Witch of the North was trying to guide him home, showing him that he had the power he needed within himself all along.