Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

8 Reasons Why We Love Comedian Ali Wong

Date March 28, 2017

Watching Ali Wong’s Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra results in the following: crying or peeing your pants a little—or both. The San Francisco-based actor/writer/comedienne talks about so many things women tend to avoid: Pooping at work, trying to get pregnant and even getting HPV. If you haven’t watched it, get to it—seriously. Here are all the reasons why we love Ali Wong.

1. She filmed Ali Wong: Baby Cobra while she was 7.5 months pregnant, spurring many, many lookalikes come Halloween. (See them on her Instagram feed.) Perhaps the best part is that she wore an $8 H&M mini-dress for the show, according to The Washington Post. How’s that for not taking yourself too seriously?

2. Her daughter’s name, Mari, was inspired by decluttering expert Marie Kondo (no, really). She told The Cut/New York Magazine that The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was “one of the most influential books I read in my adult life.” Wong then goes on to describe which of her 10 pairs of black booties sparked joy (hint: not many).

3. Wong took part in Opening Ceremony’s Fall II/Winter 2016 “Pageant of the People.” Instead of a traditional runway show, the brand cast actresses and comedians, including Whoopi Goldberg, Rosario Dawson and Rashida Jones, to speak out on a range of political issues including immigration, gender inequality and police brutality. When asked “How do you balance it all?” she responded: “People ask me that all the time. Men never get asked that question because they don’t. They just ignore the child. But dad’s get so much praise. My husband occasionally changes diapers and people can’t believe it…” Watch her full response below.

4. The stage is her writing partner: Even after Wong gave birth to Mari, she would go out to comedy clubs to try her material, according to a profile written about her in the New Yorker. She doesn’t tell her fans where she’s headed beforehand, though, because then she can test out new jokes. “If the audience is really shitty, you feel free to just blurt things out,” she told the New Yorker. “That’s the only way I write: onstage.”

5. Organic vitamin D milk is on her rider, according to The Cut/New York Magazine. She told journalist Kathleen Hou that she requests the milk as well as Fiji water and a crib because she now tours with her husband and baby. (This is way lower maintenance than RiRi, who, according to Business Insider, asks for one large cheetah- or leopard-printed throw rug; Drake who requests four dozen incense sticks; and Madonna, who ships her own furniture around the world so she feels at home—though, to be fair, Wong is not yet at that level of fame.)

6. In Baby Cobra, Ali Wong jokes about her miscarriage, but she does so to normalize the conversation about it. The comedian discussed her reasons for including that topic in her show with The Guardian: “…It really helped me when I had a miscarriage to talk to other women and hear that they’d been through it, too,” she said. “It’s one thing to hear the statistics but it’s another to put faces to the numbers so you stop feeling like it’s your fault.”

7. Wong is not only a comedian but also an actor with roles in the TV series American Housewife and Fresh off the Boat (for which she is also a writer). And, if you’re a fan of cartoons, she was the voice of Betty Bird in The Angry Birds Movie.

8. Her collection of eyewear is awesome: Wong told The Cut that she used to wear contacts, until one day when she left them in for too long and her eyes got all sore and red. So now she has since switched to glasses and noted that ophthalmologists wear them, too, so it’s got to be the way to go. Here are a few of our fave pairs of hers: