There’s weird, and then there’s Nora From Queens weird—which, in its third season, means Grandma is running a weed empire, Michael Bolton is working retail, and reality is melting faster than your tolerance during an edible-fueled binge of Comedy Central.
Co-creator Teresa Hsiao and scene-stealing SNL MVP Bowen Yang stopped by to talk about the final season, which picks up after a multi-year gap that includes a little pandemic, a lot of dysfunction, and maybe the most grounded descent into absurdity currently on television.
“It feels like we start in a really real place,” says Hsiao. “Nobody's where they thought they'd be… except Edmund.” That would be Yang’s character—Nora’s cousin—who ended Season 2 on the rise and now finds himself famous, successful, and absolutely miserable. “It’s an identity crisis,” Yang admits. “He seems happy on the outside, but inside? Gaping holes.”
For Yang, Season 3 marks the first time he’s actually related to Edmund. “In previous seasons, he was doing things I’d never done—college admissions scandals, audition failures. This time? It’s about overcommitting, losing yourself, trying to fill a void with industry hangouts. It hit very close.”
Did acting it out help? “Honestly, yes,” he says. “I wrapped the show and went, ‘Maybe I should just… chill?’”
Hsiao notes that while Edmund is spinning out, the rest of the family is in full-blown entropy mode. And now that weed is legal in New York, the show’s already blurred lines between fantasy and reality get even foggier. “We know Lori Tan Chinn,” she says of the show’s iconic Grandma. “And of course she’d become a weed kingpin. Why wouldn’t she?”
And yes, that is Michael Bolton you’re seeing as a music store employee named Kevin. “We wrote him as ‘think Michael Bolton,’” says Hsiao. “Then we thought—why not just ask him?” Not only did Bolton say yes, he sang. And came back for more episodes. “He was lovely,” she says. “Totally game.”
There’s also a detour to Iceland, where the show drops a few Björk breadcrumbs—but no, they didn’t actually ask her to appear. “That would’ve been amazing,” Hsiao sighs. “Total missed opportunity.”
As for Yang, who juggles Nora duties with his gig at Saturday Night Live, the biggest challenge isn’t playing new characters—it’s not accidentally turning every character into one of his own. “SNL, you pop in and out of stuff. You don’t think about motivation,” he says. “But here, you live in that person for a while. Your body doesn’t always know it’s fiction.”
Fantasy, identity, fame, failure, Grandma’s weed cartel—it’s all just another week in Queens. And it’s still one of the funniest, strangest, most unexpectedly poignant shows on TV.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
