Ali Wong Reveals ‘Hardest Part About Getting Divorced’ for Her

Ali Wong is opening up about her divorce. In a March interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wong detailed the “hardest part” about the subsequent fallout to the highly publicized announcement of her split from Justin Hakuta in April 2022. “I did not expect the announcement to be so widespread, but by far, the hardest part about getting divorced was my mother’s reaction,” she said. “I had told her before that I thought we might get divorced, and she was really upset. She looked me in the eye and asked, ‘Can you just wait until I die?’ She was literally asking me to not live a life for myself. But she’s 82, what do I expect? She hasn’t had her period in 40 years. She’s in the sha-ha-hallows of senior citizenship. But it was still really fucking hard dealing with all her fear of the shame it would bring her.” 

Wong added, “But then, what was kind of cool about the announcement was that she didn’t have to tell any of her friends. All of them found out because it made it to a bunch of the Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers — I still can’t believe why on earth they would be interested in me — and they all called her. She died a million deaths in one day and then woke up the next day and was like, ‘I survived.’ She still sees Justin a ton.” Wong called what she and Hakuta have “a very unconventional divorce” in which the two are not just co-parents but still friends. “We’re really, really close; we’re best friends. We’ve been through so much together. It’s a very unconventional divorce,” the stand-up comedian told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m still workshopping it, but the bones are there and it came to me very fast. This is the first hour I’m doing since I started where I’m single. I think we’re going to call it the Single Lady tour.”

“I probably should think about it more, but it’s so hard to come up with a funny joke that I don’t edit [myself] and think about things as much as you think I do or should,” said Wong of her writing approach, which has not changed despite her dramatic life changes and increased attention to them. “I’m very blessed, I think, because of how I grew up. Other Asian American people in entertainment have spoken to this when they’re like, ‘You just seem very free.’ I haven’t known any other way. I have my [family] and the communities that I grew up in to thank for that.”