Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers Reflect on Their Friendship, from Meeting at 19 to Creating an Awards Show on Bravo (Exclusive)

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The longtime friends and collaborators will co-host their fourth annual 'Las Culturistas Culture Awards' on Tuesday, Aug. 5NEED TO KNOW
Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers spoke exclusively with PEOPLE at the taping of the fourth annual Las Culturistas Culture Awards
There, the comedians spoke about their successful, longtime friendship and their widely celebrated podcast
The Las Culturistas Culture Awards air on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 9 p.m. ET on BravoBowen Yang and Matt Rogers brought their inside joke to Bravo.
The pair of podcast hosts — and close friends — spoke exclusively with PEOPLE at their Las Culturistas podcast's fourth annual Culture Awards. Ahead of the award show's taping, the actors spoke about the evolution of their friendship to broadcasting their pop culture award show on Bravo.
The two comedians have hosted their pop culture comedy podcast for nearly a decade. Throughout its tenure, they have developed jokes for their devoted audience, inadvertently creating the Las Culturistas Culture Awards.
The show, which has 100 unique categories, from 'Eva Longoria Award For Tiny Woman, Huge Impact' to 'Best Hand Moment, Excellence In Hands,' honors what the two comics find noteworthy in culture. Notably, the pair has said how the show began as an ongoing joke on their podcast, and quickly developed into in-person events that fans attended in New York City and Los Angeles.
As they reflected on their podcast's growth and, in turn, the awards show telecast, Yang, 34, explained how hard the pair had worked on this event, and recalled a conversation he had with Tony winner Cole Escola.
'Cole Escola recently was like telling me, like, 'I don't like it when people say this person deserved it, or this thing deserved it, it feels like we don't deserve it.' But at the same time, I reject that notion, because no one deserves anything,' Yang said. 'Also, this is something that started as a bit, but what is also true is that we put a lot of hard work into it.'
Rogers, 35, then remarked, 'I will say, if I could go back to those you know, 19-year-olds that met and became such close friends, and told them what would happen. It'd be kind of crazy.' (Their friendship first began in New York City when they met as students at New York University.)
'I think they would just, they'd be like, 'That's really daunting. How are we gonna do it?'' he said, adding, 'But we did it.'
Weeks before they filmed, the duo celebrated their podcast at Cannes Lions, and Yang remarked on how their friendship has translated to the podcast format. 'I think what I love most about our friendship is what listeners like about the friendship,' the Saturday Night Live star said, per E! News.
"You're in on the joke," he began to explain. "We have a deep well of inside jokes, of bits, of friends, of random people we met—and it's all wonderful strolls down memory lane. And I think what we're building with the podcast is inside jokes for everybody to be in on.'
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After the show's taping, the podcast co-hosts appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 28 and celebrated their spot on Time Magazine's list of the 100 all-time best podcasts.
Reflecting on their experience, Rogers said that the podcast's success surprised them as they "knew" that "no one would listen" when they created it in 2016. Things changed during the pandemic, as people were longing for a sense of connection. He said, "That's what they wanted, to connect and hear a friendship in action [and] hear conversation between people who are over-caffeinated."
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The Las Culturistas Culture Awards air on Tuesday, Aug. 5 at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo, and will be available to stream on Peacock the next day.
Read the original article on People