Ali Wong Shares How Bill Hader Wooed Her Post-Divorce: “I Did ...
It may be called Single Lady, but Ali Wong’s fourth Netflix special, which debuted on Netflix October 8, is bookended by her love story with Bill Hader. Following the end of her eight-year marriage to Justin Hakuta in 2022, Wong and Hader briefly dated before confirming their relationship in April 2023. Since then, the couple has attended the Golden Globes and Emmys, where Wong won respective awards for her performance in Netflix’s Beef.
At the start of her new special, Wong says she was surprised over 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 begins. “I felt really embarrassed and ashamed, but I didn’t realize that all of these media outlets were acting like a Bat-Signal, letting all potentially interested men know that I was suddenly available. I’ve never been pursued this much in my life.”
One such suitor contacted the comedian after they had “met at, like, two dinner parties in the past.” Once he obtained her number from a mutual friend and colleague, the man—whom Wong later reveals to be Hader—professed his feelings. “Hey, Ali. I just happened to hear the news of your divorce today, and I gotta tell you…I’m excited,” Wong recalls Hader saying. “I am, Ali, because, look, I have had a crush on you forever, and I actually told my best friend years ago that you were my dream girl. And I know this sounds crazy, but, uh, I want you to be my girlfriend.”
The only problem? Wong had just joined a dating app the day prior. “And I was like, ‘I just paid $250. You seem really nice, but I gotta get my money’s worth,’” she jokes.
“Shortly after that phone call, I take off to Europe,” Wong continues. “I arrive in London and discovered that this man had sent me a bouquet of flowers.” Increasingly elaborate floral arrangements then met Wong in Amsterdam, Cologne, and Copenhagen. “I told all my girlfriends and they were like, ‘Oh my God, that is so sweet. I am so jealous,’” says Wong. But when she told her male friends, “they were like, ‘That dude sounds like a psychopath.’ That’s how cheap and lazy men have become—that now when a fellow man commits any act of kindness, any romantic gesture, it must be a symptom of an undiagnosed mental illness,” she says.
Those vastly different interpretations of Hader’s grand romantic gesture echoes a debate Hader once recounted from the writers room for his HBO series, Barry. During the show’s first season, in an effort to impress his acting-class crush, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), Hader’s Barry replaced her broken laptop. As Hader previously recalled, the show’s male writers viewed Barry’s gift as romantic. The staff’s female writers, though, thought the action was way too much, too soon. “We were like, ‘It is?’” Hader later recalled. “They said, ‘You sleep with a guy once and he buys you a laptop? I’m heading for the hills.’ And we were like, ‘Okay, that’s interesting.’” (In the final scene, Sally does perceive Barry’s laptop purchase as more creepy than sweet.)
As Wong’s singlehood continued, she engaged in multiple courtships, including one with a “big, fancy movie director” who goes unnamed in the special. “I think for the longest time I was so focused on getting dicked down,” she explains, “because the task of finding a boyfriend, someone who I consider talented, someone who makes me laugh, someone who I have a real connection with, someone who I look up to as an artist, someone that I would feel proud to introduce to my kids, my peers and my friends and my mentors, I mean, that seemed impossible, you know?”
