Ali Wong Shares How Bill Hader Courted Her After Divorce: “I Fell in Love Again”
It might be called “Single Ladies,” but Ali VuongThe fourth Netflix special, premiering on Netflix on October 8, is captivated by her love story with Bill Hader. Monitor ending her eight-year marriage ARRIVE Justin Hakuta in 2022, Wong and Hader Brief dating before confirm relationship in April 2023. Since then, the couple has attended the Golden Globes and Emmys, where Wang won respective awards for her performance in by Netflix Beeftogether.
At the start of the new special, Wong said she was surprised by the interest in her split from Hakuta, with whom she shares two children. “I didn’t expect the news of my divorce to be so widespread and public,” Wong began. “I felt really embarrassed and ashamed, but I didn’t realize that all this media was acting as a bat signal for all potentially interested men to know – I hadn’t never been pursued so much in my life.”
One such suitor reached out to the comedian after they “met at two dinner parties in the past.” After getting her phone number from a mutual friend and colleague, the man – who Wong later revealed was Hader – expressed his feelings. “Hey, Ali. Today I happened to hear about your divorce and I have to tell you…I am so excited,” Wong recalled Hader saying. “I’m Ali, because, look, I’ve had a crush on you for a long time, and I actually told my best friend years ago that you were the girl of my dreams. And I know this sounds crazy, but I want you to be my girlfriend.”
The only problem? Wong had just joined a dating app the day before. “And I was like…. ‘I just paid $250. You seem very nice, but I have to get my money’s worth,’” she joked.
“Shortly after that phone call, I left for Europe,” Wong continued. “I arrived in London and found out that this man had sent me a bouquet of flowers.” Increasingly complex flower arrangements later met Wong in Amsterdam, Cologne and Copenhagen. “I told all my girlfriends and they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s so sweet. I’m so jealous,’” Wong said. But when she told her male friends, “they said, ‘That guy sounds like a psychopath.’ That’s how cheap and lazy men have become—that now when a man does any act of kindness, any romantic gesture, it must be a symptom of a undiagnosed mental illness,” she said.
The very different interpretations of Hader’s grand romantic gesture recall a debate Hader once recounted from the writers’ room for his HBO series, Barry. During the show’s first season, in an attempt to impress her acting class, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), Hader’s Barry replaced her broken laptop. Like Hader was previously withdrawnthe show’s male writers considered Barry’s gift romantic. However, female staff writers thought the move was too much, too soon. “We said, ‘Really?’” Hader later recalled. “They say, ‘You slept with a guy once and he bought you a laptop? Head for the hills.” And we said, ‘That’s interesting, okay.’” (In the final scene, Sally finds Barry’s laptop purchase more terrifying than sweet.)
As Wong’s single life continued, she engaged in many flings, including one with a “big, posh movie director” who was unnamed in the special. “I think for the longest time I was very focused on finding a boyfriend, someone I thought was talented, someone who made me laugh, someone I had a real connection with,” she explains. person, someone I respect as an artist, someone I feel proud to introduce to my children, my peers, my friends and my mentors, I mean is, that seems impossible, you know?
