Matt and Bowen Enter the Honesty Zone

In Las Culturistas’s inaugural episode, hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang promised with tongues firmly planted in cheeks, “We’re gonna attack culture, we’re gonna improve culture, we’re gonna irrigate culture.” It was 2016, they were two little-known comedians making their way through New York’s burgeoning queer alt-comedy scene, and the podcast was one among many attempts to get noticed by a wider audience. “We started this podcast with the idea that it was going to be just for us,” Rogers says. “We did not think this was going to be a thing.”

A thing is exactly what the show became. The following year, Las Culturistas held its first live show in New York featuring more than 50 comedians. It’s since become a women-and-queers cultural staple with an enormous and passionate fan base, and, since 2022, a live annual awards show. Partly a parody of the EGOTs, the Las Culturistas Culture Awards is the only time each year the pair is in a room with their listeners. Throughout the ceremony, Rogers and Yang celebrate the podcast’s annual highlights (via segments like reading their iconic Kraft Mac & Cheese ad as a group) and flex their impressive Hollywood networking skills. Cate Blanchett, Andy Cohen, and Ariana Grande — the type of people who used to be only discussed on the show — have sent in video “acceptance speeches” in the past.

A lot has changed about the Las Culturistas universe since they first vowed to “attack culture.” The most alluring aspect of the podcast was Rogers and Yang approaching it like a mutual diary. Over the years, they’ve shared nearly everything with listeners; stories about their sex lives, personal opinions on Taylor Swift, which drag queens annoy them, and what drugs they or their guests did that weekend were all on the table. But with the podcast winning multiple awards, Yang starring on SNL, and Rogers cementing his Prince of Christmas status through a Showtime special and Capitol Records album, the pair have begun to reassess the overly candid approach of the podcast’s infancy.

Now, armed with more fame, success, and viral advice from Tina Fey, Rogers and Yang are gearing up for the 2024 Culture Awards at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn on June 15. According to showrunner and executive producer Lauren Mandel, the guests will include Hannah Einbinder, Cole Escola, Julio Torres, Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, Heather McMahan, Julia Fox, and Tomás Matos, plus Sabrina Carpenter, who is set to make a “special video appearance” as the personification of “summer.” It’s going to be big, it’s going to have culture, and it will be the kind of whimsical delight that leaves nasty questions of “authenticity” at home in favor of glorious stupidity. Thank God there’s still space for that.

Right before the pandemic began, I remember a topic on Las Culturistas was how to record the podcast moving forward. Matt had just moved to L.A., so the options were either to record episodes on separate coasts via Zoom or bank non-topical episodes when you were together. How do you think of those two mediums now?
Matt Rogers: The way I think about it is, How can we accomplish getting an episode out week to week? That is what we do, and we make the best of whatever situation it is. Ideally, Bowen and I are in the same place — not just for the podcast but for friendship. Sometimes, virtual is the only way to accomplish it and then we make the best of it. But do I like doing the podcast virtually? No. The energy when we’re in person with each other or with the guest makes the podcast what it is.

Bowen Yang: Which is not to devalue moments that come out of a virtual recording setup where we will have wonderful conversations. I tend to not necessarily mind the one-on-one episodes where it’s just Matt and I on Zoom, because we have been able to modulate our friendship and our dynamic in enough ways now to have it work outside of real-time spatial concurrence.

M.R.: The Zoom episodes with guests feel more like interviews in a way that I personally don’t like. When Las Culturistas feels like a conversation between two or three people, that’s what’s fun about it. The pandemic forcing us virtual made it seem like this was an interview podcast, and it’s not. Online, we’re quietly listening and then giving space after an answer to really absorb, and that’s not who we are. We’re not interviewers. We’re comedians, we’re fools, we’re clowns.

I’m curious about the one-on-one episodes. Prior to 2019, those were extremely uncommon. What was the benefit to including episodes that just feature the two of you chatting?
B.Y.: Matt and I are true “variety” people. We do well in different configurations, whether it’s Matt singing original, beautiful Christmas songs onstage by himself or me being on this multi-cam live sketch show.

M.R.: You’re not saying the name of the show. Classic Bowen to downgrade what that is.

It’s like when someone went to Harvard and they say, “I went to school in Boston.”
B.Y.: [Laughs.] Matt and I enjoy the different hats. That all gets poured into the show, where we have thoughtful or not-so-thoughtful conversations about things that happen, as they happen. Sometimes, that’s best served by him and I just having a conversation that is frivolous and maybe sometimes emotional, too vulnerable, a little cringey, whatever. By keeping the podcast low-concept, it has given us a high ceiling to try all these different kinds of things.

M.R.: Any given episode of the show is one we wanted to put out. There are extensive conversations about the people we have on the show or if we just don’t want to deal with it and would rather talk to each other. If it’s me and Bowen fucking around stoned, or it’s an interview with —

Katie Couric.
M.R.: You said that, I didn’t say that. Bitch!

B.Y.: Wait, what did he say?

M.R.: You really are one of the girls, aren’t you?

You guys talked to Katie Couric!
[Both laugh.]

M.R.: You are! I see you, bitch. Don’t clutch those pearls.

That’s what I mean when I try to distinguish us as comedians and then also interviewers: Don’t expect a good interview from us. And please note that I’m clapping my hands and punctuating it: Do. Not. Expect. A. Good. Interview. From. Us. Ever. 

Bowen, you mentioned getting “too vulnerable”; I do think one of the original aspects of Las Cultch that was so intoxicating for so many people was that it was diaristic. What was the value of that vulnerability?
B.Y.: It goes back to the low-concept thing. The best decision we ever made with the podcast was before the podcast even started: We had all these ideas that were incredibly complicated and high-concept, then Matt was like, “What if it’s just the two of us as ourselves talking about pop culture?” That gave us so much latitude to react in the moment so it would always end up being personal. Over the years, we’ve learned to temper the response a little bit in a way that benefits everybody.

During the early days, I heard about your trying LSD and about Matt’s breakup with Henry. It felt like the listener was getting a record of your lives off the show — why was that worthwhile?
M.R.: It was a classic case of not knowing any better. We started this podcast with the idea that it was going to be just for us. We did not think this was going to be a thing. It was a totally different world. We were anti-Reputation, by Taylor Swift. And we were so wrong.

You mentioned my breakup with Henry. At the time, I felt like I wasn’t saying anything that the people listening didn’t already know because they were my friends. There was a lack of care for him in my oversharing, and that became an issue in our relationship. But several years later, I went through one of the most difficult times of my life with another person. I was keeping so much back from the podcast. That’s when I realized things had changed — not only because of the way it affects other people but also because I’m now very aware that a lot of people listen to this, and it’s hard.

When you refer to it as diaristic, for ten years I always said to myself, I wish I kept a diary. And then I realized I have been keeping a diary. I don’t think I could write out something more in-depth than what we’ve shared in episodes. But now we’re very conscious of it — very conscious of it — and if that’s uncool and makes the podcast different from when it started, I cop to that.

I do feel I have to throw two words out: Honesty Zone.
B.Y.: Yes.

What did you feel you weren’t able to do on the podcast that you were trying to create with it?
B.Y.: I have employed “Honesty Zone” in professional settings. I’ve used Honesty Zone at SNL with producers. Honesty Zone for the podcast is something specific, but Honesty Zone in any other setting, professional or personal, is about giving space for honest thoughts to be shared. If we were just completely engineering the artifice of the show and the friendship, then that would come off as instantly legible by the listener. Honesty Zone is our way of figuring out where the supply-and-demand curves meet in terms of how honest the audience wants us to be. And sometimes, the demand for honesty is way higher than what we are able to supply.

M.R.: There are real stakes in our careers now because we’re talented and have worked really hard. So if that comes at the expense of someone’s experience, then adjust what you want from us. Also, the podcast is not that fucking different. Maybe we’re just not being completely reckless anymore.

Now I have an instinct to do Honesty Zone: Jason, what do you think about how the podcast has changed?

I think it’s different in a way that is necessitated by your careers, and that’s part of why I wanted to talk.
B.Y.: That’s accurate. And I think that’s okay.

M.R.: I’m angsty about it, though. There is definitely an attitude out there that we’ve sold out or we’re not giving what we used to give. It bugs me because I’m like, Every single week for almost nine years at this point, we have come out here. I don’t know what podcasts with people who are actually advancing in their careers are more diaristic than ours. Someone please tell me and I’ll probably show you people who have burned bridges, and we’re not willing to do that.

So why start “Honesty Zone” on Instagram Live?
M.R.: Because we’re stupid. We’re dumb! Because we’re stoned. I want to talk to my sister!

I think there is a value, emotionally, to sharing. Watching the Instagram Lives, it seemed you were excited to give edgier opinions and stories. 
B.Y.: I think that is accurate. Matt and I both have our individual death drives. We have our ways of courting danger or walking to the edge. I was just talking about this in therapy today. I feel like I have built the guardrails for myself in the past year on the pod, off the pod at my day job — I still won’t name it. I do feel like there is this sense of restricted vernacular. We are finding the words in real time, and Honesty Zone is a way to release the valve. It is us acknowledging that things have been slightly more muzzled than they were in the beginning.

I’ve heard authenticity is dangerous and expensive.
M.R.: Can you imagine being put in a position where you are Ayo Edebiri and you are hosting Saturday Night Live and the musical guest is Jennifer Lopez and then something you said on a podcast years ago is national news and then you have to go knock — let me take a deep breath — on her — another deep breath — door …

B.Y.: On Jennifer Lopez’s door …

M.R.: And explain yourself? Like, I’m sorry, but that is a parable I’m going to learn from 1,000 percent. And guess what? It might not even matter because anything Ayo said, I bet we’ve said worse!

On the podcast, you’re thinking, How do I speak on the podcast? And, The audience knows I’m thinking about how I’m speaking on the podcast. It’s a brainfuck. How do you approach it?
B.Y.: I mean, count on Tina Fey to change gay men’s lives once again. She really dropped a bomb and then walked away, and we’ve been assessing the damage ever since. We love her, obviously.

I don’t know how Matt feels, but I feel like I’m so fascinated by this journey for myself: The hidden frequency of a lot of the episodes since that one has been me figuring out what to say and how to say it. And I have gotten a little too candid about my own life, about opinions I have or other people have. I contend there is honesty in us figuring it out. There is something deeply, for lack of a better word, authentic about that. That is the meta-narrative now for the podcast, and I think that is a really valid and interesting one in 2024.

M.R.: I just don’t like to be called inauthentic. I think it’s really insulting. It really chaps my ass.

B.Y.: I’m not offended by it anymore — for me, personally, I know that is not something other people decide for me.

M.R.: You’re 100 percent right. I also think you’ve been way better known than me for a few more years so you’ve had more time to marinate in that, whereas people caring about what I might say and the fact that there might be stakes associated with that is a new thing for me. But I will say with my full chest what I think and what I believe. I never lie. I do think The Tortured Poets Department is one of her best albums. That’s just one of many things lately that people have been like, There’s no way he can possibly be telling the truth.

B.Y.: Radical Optimism is my favorite Dua Lipa album, for the record, as well.

M.R.: By the way, let’s check in at the end of the year when Spotify Wrapped comes out and then tell me I didn’t tell the truth about what I’ve liked this year. Here’s something for you: Not every pop girlie who wants to be on the podcast has been on the podcast. How about that?

B.Y.: Matthew!

M.R.: I’m sorry! We don’t say “yes” to everyone. Guess what? If someone puts out mid work, we’re not going to talk to them about it!

B.Y.: I think the solution for the honesty question is to have Jason ask these questions on the pod.

Matt, you’ve contended with the audience throughout our talk today, and you sometimes express when you don’t agree with certain audience feedback on the pod. You didn’t like when they said you didn’t like Brian Jordan Alvarez. Do you remember that?
M.R.: Yeah, I do. We had a fucking incredible time. Maybe they were picking up on the fact that I had been in Vegas for 72 hours and didn’t sleep.

I think my and Bowen’s relationships to the audience are a little bit different. I think there is a familiarity between me and the Kayteighs because I am not super A-list famous. I think they feel the need to, in a way, keep me close to them. I take it very personally when they feel disappointed in me. I’m also very sensitive — not to say Bowen isn’t, but Bowen has had to build up different armors. I’m building up those armors now. It can come across as maybe a little bit combative, but it’s because I’m hurt by the insinuation that I’m not doing a good job at this anymore. And I do think this is a very vocal minority, but it’s something I’m in my head about. And that’s Honesty Zone.

B.Y.: Matt, I wish I could get you out of that cell. My relationship with the audience is that I recede a bit. I feel like Matt is, in a lot of ways, the main character of Las Culturistas. I am there as an audience surrogate, to receive his opinions and validate them or sometimes challenge them. That’s where I am right now because I am receding just in general in my life; in the real world, I’m going to withdraw a bit. The podcast will always reflect something about where we are in our lives as friends and as individuals.

You both describe having a complicated relationship with your audience. When you do a live show, like the Culture Awards, do those complexities color being in the same room with your fans?
B.Y.: At this point, the Culture Awards is the only live show I do in the year, my day job notwithstanding. Since the pandemic, I have not done really any live shows, and for now, I’m really grateful for the Culture Awards for being this beautiful extension of the podcast. It is also budding in its own way and separating from that initial mass, so I am isolating it and treating it as its own project. Part of that is me being this performer in front of an audience based on material that I’ve written — it’s not that someone else has written me as a panda talking next to Joe Biden — and being in a self-engendered environment for me to perform in. I really, really like that. I think I’ve spoiled myself for the rest of my life and career by performing exclusively in that space.

M.R.: The root of my frustration at the disappointment the audience might feel or about their perceptions about the podcast changing is because I love them so much. They’ve given us everything. And I feel like when I go on tour for my Christmas shows [starts tearing up] I know where all those people came from, and so [chokes up], oh God, I don’t know why I’m feeling like this. We just want to do a good job, and when so many people come and so many people give you so much love, you want to give everything back. It feels like so much love in the room and so much excitement in the room. Everyone’s in it to be themselves and laugh at this stupid shit.

Where does Las Culturistas go from here?
B.Y.: I think between Matt and I, there is a vision for how we put the essence of Las Cultch into other things. To go back to your “medium” question, I think the beautiful thing about our friendship is that it is not confined to any one particular medium.

M.R.: The podcast is going to continue being what it is, and I think that “what it is” is “what it’s been.”