Conversion Therapy Backfired: How Bowen Yang Ended Up at NYU Anyway

Sometimes the universe has a twisted sense of humor—and Bowen Yang’s coming-of-age story is proof.

The SNL alum recently opened up on the Smartless podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett about the moment his life changed forever. At 17, he accidentally left a chat window open on the family computer, and his parents discovered he was gay. What followed was the kind of scenario many LGBTQ+ people recognize: panic, tears, and an ultimatum. His parents presented him with two options: stay home and attend a state school in Colorado, or move to New York to study at NYU with his sister—but only if he agreed to conversion therapy first.

Here’s where it gets good. Bowen spent eight weeks in Colorado Springs seeing what he describes as a quack therapist who tried to convince him that attraction to men was actually a symptom of being miserable or in pain. The logic was as flawed as you’d expect. But in that final session, the specialist made a slip that probably changed everything. While telling an anecdote about a former patient meeting a waiter at Denny’s, he accidentally slipped into first person: And then I was like, Am I really going to have sex with this person? And then I did. He didn’t catch himself until it was too late.

The punchline? NYU, the school his parents dangled as the carrot at the end of the conversion therapy stick, turned out to be, in Bowen’s own words, the gayest school in the country. His parents’attempt to steer him straight inadvertently handed him the keys to one of the most LGBTQ+-friendly campuses in America. It’s the kind of cosmic irony that feels almost too perfectly constructed—except it’s real, and it happened.

What makes this story resonate isn’t just the dark humor (though there’s plenty of that). It’s a window into how conversion therapy operates: on shame, fear, and the false promise that sexuality can be rewired through pseudo-psychology. Bowen’s willingness to talk about it openly—and to find humor in the absurdity—chips away at the stigma around these experiences. His story also reminds us that sometimes the people trying hardest to push us away from who we are inadvertently push us toward exactly where we need to be.