Ali Wong Credits Help From Her Mom & Ex For Her Thriving Career
The divorced mom of two has it all... thanks to a lot of help.
Moms, if not one has told you this, please let me be the one to (gently, lovingly) pop your bubble: there is no “having it all.” Not the way a lot of us probably imagined it at one point. No one excels in having a career and motherhood without help. A lot of help. Not even celebrities. In a recent feature interview with InStyle, comedian Ali Wong says her ex-husband, Justin Hakuta, and her mother, Tammy Wong, for her ability to have it all.
Wong shares two daughters — Mari, 8 and Nikki, 6 — with Hakuta, from whom she separated in 2022. Despite their 2023 divorce, however, the two remain close; she describes Hakuta as “amazing” and her “best friend” to InStyle. She also highlights the fact that her mother accompanies her and her daughters on tour, where they do family vacation things during the day — sight-seeing, museums, shopping — after which Wong performs at night.
“It’s mostly because of [my mom] and the father of my children that I’ve been able to do everything I do,” she says.
Another factor that helped her “have it all?” Money. “I was so fortunate that by the time I was going on tour, like, my first big tour, I had the means to pay for my kids to come with me.”
Wong and Hakuta were married in 2014 (fun fact: she performed a set the night of her wedding) after four years together. Hakuta is a Harvard Business School alum: something Wong joked about in her breakout comedy special Baby Cobra, saying she wanted to “trap” him so he could provide for her. But, she continues, “I discovered that my beautiful, Harvard-educated husband was $70,000 in debt. And me, with my hard-earned money, paid it all off. So, as it turns out, he’s the one who trapped me!” she joked. “How did he do it? How did he bamboozle me? Oh! Maybe because he went to Harvard Business School, the epicenter of white-collar crime.”
But their split, Wong says, was and remains amicable. She told InStyle that she’s remained friends with most of her exes. “I understand that some people really need to cut the cord, but that never worked for me.” When she won a Golden Globe for Best Female Actor in a Limited Series for Beef, she made sure to thank Hakuta, saying. “I really need to thank the father of my children and my best friend, Justin, for all of your love and support. It’s because of you that I’m able to be a working mother.”
Wong is currently dating comedian (and elder-Millennial crush) Bill Hader , who is also divorced with daughters. And over the summer, she, Hader, Hakuta, Mari, and Nikki were all able to celebrate Wong at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History: the dress she wore during Baby Cobra is on display alongside the likes of Prince’s guitar and C3P0 and R2-D2. “It was really, really nice,” she told InStyle. “And my daughter Mari, like, pointed to my stomach [in the display]. She's like, That's me. She and my other daughter do take a lot of pride in the fact that they were onstage with me. It's very sweet.”
It’s also sweet to be able to share a moment like that with your ex and your boyfriend and your kids. So, no, having it all is a myth, but with support (and, as Wong will tell you, money) you can get close.
