Bowen Yang Says He Nearly Died While Filming ‘Nora From Queens’

Bowen Yang almost died in Iceland while filming Nora From Queens alongside Awkwafina. The actor opened up about his near-death experience on a recent episode of his podcast Las Cutlturistas.

“Actually, not fun, not fun to be on a horse,” Yang began. “[I’ve] rode a horse for the camera. Guess what? This crew, and I love this crew, but this crew decided to have a drone, and of course, the horse doesn’t know what the f--- that is, and then I almost died,” he revealed. “I almost died in Iceland!”

Yang continued to explain that the situation was caused by the horses being comfortable having drones nearby. “Even hundreds of yards away, these horses can clock. They were spooked and then I almost [fell off],” he said, adding that he was oddly at peace, should the incident have ended differently. “I almost got bucked, and there was part of me, though, that was like, ‘This is a good way to go.’”

This all went down during the filming of the third season, when Yang’s character joined Akwafina in Iceland while she sought out long-lost relatives, and it wasn’t Yang’s only embarrassing moment on set. “The other narrative from Iceland was that I had a piece of used toilet paper — my own used toilet paper — stuck to my shoe and then everybody on set saw,” he recalled. As a result, he spent the whole day walking around “with a big brown” on his pants.

While that may have made Bowen feel like he wanted to die of embarrassment, we’re so glad he survived both harrowing events in Iceland and lived to tell the hilarious tales.