Ali Wong Shares How Bill Hader Wooed Her Postdivorce: “I Did Fall in Love Again”

It might be referred to as Single Girl, however Ali Wong’s fourth Netflix particular, which debuted on Netflix October 8, is bookended by her love story with Invoice Hader. Following the top of her eight-year marriage to Justin Hakuta in 2022, Wong and Hader briefly dated earlier than confirming their relationship in April 2023. Since then, the couple has attended the Golden Globes and Emmys, the place Wong received respective awards for her efficiency in Netflix’s Beef.

At the beginning of her new particular, Wong says she was shocked over the curiosity in her break up from Hakuta, with whom she shares two youngsters. “I didn’t count on the information of my divorce to be so widespread and public,” Wong begins. “I felt actually embarrassed and ashamed, however I didn’t notice that each one of those media shops have been appearing like a Bat-Sign, letting all probably males know that I used to be out of the blue accessible. I’ve by no means been pursued this a lot in my life.”

One such suitor contacted the comic after that they had “met at, like, two dinner events prior to now.” As soon as he obtained her quantity from a mutual good friend and colleague, the person—whom Wong later reveals to be Hader—professed his emotions. “Hey, Ali. I simply occurred to listen to the information of your divorce at the moment, and I gotta let you know…I’m excited,” Wong remembers Hader saying. “I’m, Ali, as a result of, look, I’ve had a crush on you eternally, and I truly instructed my finest good friend years in the past that you just have been my dream lady. And I do know this sounds loopy, however, uh, I would like you to be my girlfriend.”

The one drawback? Wong had simply joined a courting app the day prior. “And I used to be like, ‘I simply paid $250. You appear very nice, however I gotta get my cash’s price,’” she jokes.

“Shortly after that cellphone name, I take off to Europe,” Wong continues. “I arrive in London and found that this man had despatched me a bouquet of flowers.” More and more elaborate floral preparations then met Wong in Amsterdam, Cologne, and Copenhagen. “I instructed all my girlfriends and so they have been like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so candy. I’m so jealous,’” says Wong. However when she instructed her male associates, “they have been like, ‘That dude seems like a psychopath.’ That’s how low cost and lazy males have grow to be—that now when a fellow man commits any act of kindness, any romantic gesture, it have to be a symptom of an undiagnosed psychological sickness,” she says.

These vastly completely different interpretations of Hader’s grand romantic gesture echoes a debate Hader as soon as recounted from the writers room for his HBO collection, Barry. Through the present’s first season, in an effort to impress his acting-class crush, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), Hader’s Barry changed her damaged laptop computer. As Hader beforehand recalled, the present’s male writers seen Barry’s reward as romantic. The workers’s feminine writers, although, thought the motion was method an excessive amount of, too quickly. “We have been like, ‘It’s?’” Hader later recalled. “They mentioned, ‘You sleep with a man as soon as and he buys you a laptop computer? I’m heading for the hills.’ And we have been like, ‘Okay, that’s attention-grabbing.’” (Within the last scene, Sally does understand Barry’s laptop computer buy as extra creepy than candy.)

As Wong’s singlehood continued, she engaged in a number of courtships, together with one with a “huge, fancy film director” who goes unnamed within the particular. “I feel for the longest time I used to be so targeted on getting dicked down,” she explains, “as a result of the duty of discovering a boyfriend, somebody who I think about gifted, somebody who makes me snicker, somebody who I’ve an actual reference to, somebody who I look as much as as an artist, somebody that I’d really feel proud to introduce to my youngsters, my friends and my associates and my mentors, I imply, that appeared inconceivable, you understand?”