Ali Wong & Justin Hakuta "Will Continue To Co-Parent Lovingly" As They Confirm Divorce News

Ever since she appeared seven months pregnant in her debut comedy special, Baby Cobra, on Netflix in 2016, comedian Ali Wong has been a patron saint of mothers. She’s hilarious, refreshingly honest, and irreverent about parenting, relationships, and marriage. Recently, Wong confirmed her divorce from husband Justin Hakuta, who has often been the subject of her standup.

Though Baby Cobra made her a household name (and common Halloween costume), Wong was doggedly making a name for herself in the comedy scene, performing up to nine times a night (including on her wedding night!) and serving as a writer on Fresh Off The Boat. But it would seem fame hasn’t slowed her down in the slightest.

In addition to performing standup, she wrote a book, Dear Girls, which was published in 2018, the same year her second Netflix special, Hard Knock Wife, aired. In 2019, she wrote and starred in Always Be My Maybe, a romantic comedy co-starring Randall Park. She’s also done a number of voiceover roles, including Ali on Big Mouth and Bertie on Tuca & Bertie. In 2020, she was announced to be part of the Netflix is a Joke Fest but, like, we all know how 2020 went. (Fortunately, the festival was rescheduled for 2022.) Fans recently enjoyed her third comedy special, Don Wong, which debuted on Netflix in February.

Hakuta and their two kids have often been included in Wong’s comedy, but who are they? The comedian is generally private about her daughters — whose faces are always obscured or blurred on social media posts — and pretty open about her relationship with Hakuta. But here’s what she has shared about her family.

She married Justin Hakuta in 2014.

Wong and Hakuta met at a wedding reception in 2010, which she described in Baby Cobra. The two were married four years later at City Hall in San Francisco.

Hakuta is the son of Ken Hakuta, an inventor, entrepreneur, and TV personality who went by the stage name “Dr. Fad” in the 1980s. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School, a fact that Wong joked in Baby Cobra made her want to “trap” him so he could financially provide for her. But, she continued, her plan went awry. “I discovered that my beautiful, Harvard-educated husband was $70,000 in debt. And me, with my hard-earned money, paid it all off. So, as it turns out, he’s the one who trapped me!” she joked. “How did he do it? How did he bamboozle me? Oh! Maybe because he went to Harvard Business School, the epicenter of white-collar crime.”

But the degree has been used well. Hakuta is the vice-president of tech company GoodRX. We also have to imagine that his business acumen came in handy when he sold merch at Wong’s shows.

Wong has also been open about the fact that prior to the birth of their first child, she suffered a miscarriage. “I remember hoping my husband's parents wouldn't be disappointed” she told Health in 2020. “It was this intrinsic concern. I didn't want them to feel like their son married a bad seed — and they didn't feel that way; they were very supportive. And there was nothing that would indicate that they would ever think that way, but that's where my mind immediately went.”

Wong confirmed that she and Hakuta were divorcing in April 2022.

Wong’s rep confirmed the news to People, with a source saying that the split after 12 years together and 8 years of marriage was amicable. “It's amicable and they will continue to co-parent lovingly,” the source told People.

In Hard Knock Wife, Wong joked about the fact that she signed a prenup before their marriage, a decision urged by Hakuta’s family.

She discussed the prenup more seriously in Dear Girls, saying that “being forced to sign that prenup was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me and my career.”

“I was very motivated to make my own money because I signed a document specifically outlining how much I couldn’t depend on my husband,” she wrote. “My father always praised ‘the gift of fear’ and that prenup scared the s*** out of me.”

The news sparked a Twitter hashtag.

Multiple outlets, including MSN and Parade Magazine, reported the news of Wong and Hakuta’s split by sharing images of Wong and her Always Be My Maybe co-star Randall Park (or, indeed, just an image of Park himself in the case of MSN), prompting the hashtag #WrongAsian to go viral.

While Parade Magazine issued an apology, many highlighted the fact that misidentifying BIPOC celebrities is an all-too-common and inexcusable occurrence in media (and in everyday interactions for ordinary people). Karen Grigsby Bates, a senior correspondent for NPR’s Code Switch, observed on Twitter, “Having been mistaken for the Only Other Black Woman on several occasions, I am disturbed that this is still happening. Wong and Hakuta can at least be properly identified if their personal trauma is going to be reported in the media.”

Their oldest daughter Mari was born in 2015.

Mari’s first public engagement was in Wong’s baby bump in Baby Cobra, so fans are used to seeing but not really seeing her. She was born in November 2015, before her famous mom’s comedy special first-aired in 2016. She is now 6 years old.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Wong said that she’d been approached several times to make a comedy special, but had always turned down the suggestion. It was her pregnancy, and Mari, that prompted her to say yes to Baby Cobra. “I thought that if I did it when I was pregnant then I would always associate the baby with a break if I got it,” she said. “It sounds crazy, but if it wasn’t for Mari and doing that special when I was pregnant with her I could see how very easily I would have slowed down, and stopped.”

(On behalf of comedy fans everywhere: thanks, Mari!)

We get some insight into Mari’s early days in Wong’s second special, Hard Knock Wife, in which Wong talks about breastfeeding, daily-skin-to-skin contact, the isolation of new motherhood and maternity leave, and joining a mommy group in Los Angeles.

Their toddler Nikki was born in 2017.

Like her sister before her, Nikki also appeared as a baby bump in one of her mother’s comedy specials. (She can be “seen” “wearing” a leopard spot dress in Hard Knock Wife.) She was born in December of 2017 and is now 4 years old.

Wong told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2018 interview that Nikki was initially a source of jealousy for big sister Mari, who regressed to infant behaviors when Little Sis came around. When she told Wong she wanted to “drink milk from her boobies,” Wong joked, “The fact that you can complete that full sentences disqualifies you; that and your full set of teeth.”

When DeGeneres asked if Wong would be having any more children, Wong responded that she was done. “I’m done. I love being a mom and I liked having two kids, but I’ve had two C-sections and I’ve suffered enough.”