Does it weird you out when people dress up as you?” I asked Ali Wong.
It was a ballsy question because I was sitting in front of Ali in a copy of what she wore in her second Netflix comedy special “Hard Knock Wife”—leopard print dress, top knot, red glasses, gold shoes, pretend pregnant belly and all.
I am not alone in feeling the urge to dress up as Ali. The attack of Ali Wong clones started in 2016, when her first and hugely successful Netflix comedy special “Baby Cobra” came out. The streaming world discovered her bold brand of hilarity and the following Halloween, hundreds of women (and men) put on striped black and white dresses over fake pregnant bellies and donned red glasses and red flats to complete their Ali transformation. The same thing happened in 2018 with “Hard Knock Wife.”
“I love it so much. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. A lot of people said to me, ‘Thank you for giving Asian women an easy costume.’ And I was like, ‘That’s such a weird thing to be thankful for,’” said Ali. “But if you think about it, Halloween can be so fun for blonde people or whatever but with Asian-American women, you got to get a wig… it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of money. What they’re saying is thank you for giving us a cheap costume. But I love it so much. It’s like the biggest compliment. I feel like it’s more meaningful than like any anything else in the world.”
Ali was sitting with Randall Park in a room at the The London West Hollywood hotel where they were spending the day doing press for their Netflix rom-com “Always Be My Maybe,” which they wrote, produced and starred in.
Longtime friends
Ali and Randall are longtime friends who first met as students at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), when Ali joined LCC Theatre Company, the Asian-American theater group that Randall had founded. One of their earliest memories together was a party in Randall’s apartment —an annual fried rice contest hosted by Randall’s friend Hieu.
Ali’s entry was cranberry fried rice. “But then Rick Lee won because he made chocolate fried rice,” she said.
“I made chocolate fried rice. I don’t know if I did that year though. But I did one year. We made really bad fried rice for this competition,” Randall said, laughing.
Ali shared, “I remember Randall pulled in on a bicycle to his apartment with like a cigar in his mouth. Very cool… When I was in college, Randall was like, a deity, and I couldn’t believe we were friends sometimes. He was so cool. And now here we are.”
Sasha and Marcus
In the movie, Ali and Randall play Sasha Tran and Marcus Kim, childhood friends who have a falling out after one awkward night as teenagers. They meet again as adults—with Sasha now a celebrity chef and Marcus a happily complacent musician still living with his dad—and sparks fly… kind of.
Unlike Sasha and Marcus, once Ali and Randall’s friendship started, there was never a pause. Randall said, “It was constant throughout the years. There were times when Ali lived in New York or she moved to San Francisco and I didn’t see her or talk to her as much but I would always see her whenever I’d be in New York or San Francisco.”
Their friendship continued as Ali hustled as a stand-up comic (she thanks Randall in the credits of both “Baby Cobra” and “Hard Knock Wife”) and Randall was cast in TV shows like “The Office” (he played Asian Jim, remember?), “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Veep” and movies like “The Interview” (where he played Kim Jong-Un), “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and “Aquaman.” The two also worked together on the sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” where Ali was a writer for three seasons and Randall plays Louis Huang.
It was in an interview with The New Yorker in 2016 that Ali casually mentioned her plans to write a rom-com with Randall, their “version of ‘When Harry Met Sally.’” Vulture picked up the story, publishing a piece called “Dear Hollywood, Please Make Ali Wong and Randall Park’s Dream Rom-Com.” That set things in motion, with their agents being inundated with phone calls about the film.
Ali and Randall began working on the script. Randall said, “For about a month, Ali and I just wrote out a very detailed outline of the entire movie. We met regularly at a workspace or coffee shop almost every week, if not more.”
Then they brought in another LCC member Michael Golamco (who’s half-Filipino, by the way) to help them. “He was an old friend who knew the things that we were talking about in the script . . . the three of us would just meet regularly and work on the script,” said Randall.
Really special
“Fresh Off the Boat” creator Nahnatchka Khan, who was initially a script consultant, soon came onboard to be the director. Randall said, “The whole process from beginning to end was very joyful. We got to work with each other, we got to work with Natch. It’s really, really special.”
“Because we all have worked together and have a lot of faith in each other, you could walk away and go to the bathroom and trust that not everything was going to fall apart,” said Ali.
The challenges of juggling the role of writer, producer and actor were more personal for Ali. For this devoted mom, who has been taking her kids with her on her Milk & Money Tour, “Not being able to see my kids as much was really hard for me and it’s kind of deterring me from saying yes to other projects. My kids are so young and they grow up so fast. With my first kid, I think I breastfed for like nine months. With my second kid, I stopped after three and a half months because of this movie. And, you know, it’s fine, but had it not been that way, I maybe would have gone on just like a little bit longer, you know?” she said.
Randall said that the creative process was easier for them because of the people they chose to collaborate with—including producers Nathan Kahane and Erin Westerman of Good Universe. “It just felt like these were the right people,” he said.
Casting
They made great casting choices as well. “Oh my god, we went to so many casting sessions. It was so uncomfortable at times because we’ve been on the other side, you know,” Ali said.
James Saito, who plays Marcus’ dad Harry, said, “The script was terrific. I thought it was going to be a real joy. It was a ball. It was a ball because Ali and Randall are so delightful as people, and they’re so creative and talented.”
Michelle Buteau, who has known Ali in the stand-up circuit for 15 years now, was cast to play Veronica, Sasha’s best friend. “I love Ali and I love Randall and I love Natch. And let’s be honest, I love Netflix. Everything that Ali and Randall have done thus far I’m a fan of so I’m like, of course. Yes. Asian Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, bring it on. Let’s do it,” she said, adding, “To be around boss-ass women who are kicking ass and men who are facilitating that and also an Asian crew and an Asian cast, it felt like I was on a rainbow every damn day. When people set you up for success, you want to meet them up there, too. That’s what this was.”
Ali added, “It’s rare. I mean, I think definitely, (Randall and I) both worked at places where it did not feel like walking on a rainbow.”
Michelle shared, “I already knew that Ali was awesome and funny and a hard worker but to see her balance motherhood, being a wife and being a producer. . . and then she was also finishing her book (“Dear Girls”) and doing her Netflix cartoon series with Tiffany Haddish (“Tuca & Bertie”). I’m just like, what? And then she also had time for everybody else on set to check in and see how everybody was doing. She is amazing. She’s a boss.”
Playing Sasha’s fiancé Brandon Choi is Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost,” “Hawaii Five-0”). “The movie was pitched to me as a project for Ali and Randall and they were talking about being the leads in a romantic comedy. I thought, ‘What a great idea and an idea that’s long overdue.’ From that point, I just wanted to be a part of it. It really didn’t matter to me how big my role was or how much I was getting paid. I just felt strongly about the project in general. So I hopped aboard.”
Then of course, there’s the casting coup—getting Keanu Reeves to be a part of the film. Ali said, “He was our first choice. We didn’t think we were going to get him.”
Randall said, “It was a long shot and we were like, we’re not going to get him. And then we got him. And I still can’t believe it.”
Magical
The night before our interview, people gathered for the premiere of “Always Be My Maybe” at the Regency Village Theatre, which was just a couple of minutes away from UCLA. “To have it in Westwood was so strange,” Randall said.
When I told them I thought they had chosen the theater because of its proximity to their alma mater, Ali said. “No. We chose way too many things, we were tired of choosing . . . I didn’t even know that carpet was going to be yellow.”
On the yellow carpet, there was so much love from their co-stars and the people who came to support the film. Hudson Yang, who plays Randall’s oldest son on “Fresh Off the Boat,” said, “It’s just so awesome seeing him on TV in general, he’s just so talented and being able to work with him is a dream. I think seeing him in something that he is passionate about and that he created himself is amazing, it’s wonderful.”
Inside the cinema, the audience had a great time while watching the film. They giggled. They gasped. They roared with laughter. At one point, the woman seated behind me started sniffling. I won’t deny it—I was crying, too. The magic couldn’t be felt just on the set, audiences could feel it, too.
Michelle said, “It was great. It was amazing. It felt like a dinner party with no dinner. You know, it was really special. It was the first time I got to see myself on the big screen. I cried like six times. I am surprised I still had lashes on.”
Randall said, “It was magical. This is the first time we screened the final product in front of that many people. And it was wild.”
Ali said, “Some of my best friends from college were sitting to my left and my husband and two of our really good friends were to my right. And then behind me was Keanu and that was his first time watching it. So to get to experience their reactions was really magical.”
With Ali being half- Vietnamese and half-Chinese and Randall born to Korean immigrant parents, the two had to keep fielding questions about representation and what “Always Be My Maybe” means for the Asian-American community. Randall said, “Ultimately, we just wanted to make a good movie that reflected who we were. That Asian American aspect is definitely part of who we are so it made its way into the movie. We wanted the movie to be good. If the movie sucked, we’d be doing a disservice to the community. But it was just about telling our story.”
And it is a personal story for Ali and Randall—there are bits and pieces from their lives in “Always Be My Maybe”: Marcus’ Corolla, his painter mom, San Francisco as their hometown, even Sasha’s love for D’Angelo.
Daniel said, “I love what the movie stands for. I love that there are a lot of messages in this movie that aren’t hitting you over the head. You have Asian-American leads, you have an Asian-American director, you have diversity represented throughout the entire film, you have the tropes of the rom-com kind of turned upside down. But most of all, you have an entertaining movie. And that’s what’s most important.”
Ali said, “We haven’t thought about what it means because we were too busy trying to make a good movie. We’ll have to see if it speaks to people.”
Randall added, “We have to see what people think of the movie. Hopefully a lot of people see it and feel seen.”
“Always Be My Maybe” is now streaming on Netflix.