Ali Wong addresses what Bill Hader did to win her over after her divorce

Hader confirmed he was dating Wong in April 2023

Ali Wong has shared how her boyfriend Bill Hader won her over after her split from her husband of eight years, Justin Hakuta.

The 42-year-old actor opened up about finding love again after her divorce during her new Netflix special, Ali Wong: Single Lady, which was released on October 8. During the stand-up comedy segment, she shared that when her divorce from Hakuta became public, many different men reached out to her.

She also confessed that after her split, she decided to join a dating app, which she paid for. However, the day after joining the app she received a phone call from someone she’d met before at “two dinner parties in the past.” During the call, which came after the man got her number from a mutual friend, he took the opportunity to tell the comedian he admired her.

“He was like, ‘Hey, Ali. I just happened to hear the news of your divorce today, and I gotta tell you, I’m excited. 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.  I know this sounds crazy, but, uh, I want you to be my girlfriend,’” Wong recalled about her conversation with the potential suitor, per Vanity Fair.

The Beef star then shared her response to the message, hilariously acknowledging that she’d just paid a lot of money for a year-long subscription to a dating app. “I just paid $250. You seem really nice, but I gotta get my money’s worth,” she joked.

Ali Wong and Bill Hader at Golden Globes After Party in 2024 (Getty Images for Netflix)

Wong noted that after the phone call, she went on a trip to Europe where she received multiple gifts from the man who had called her. “I arrived in London and discovered that this man had sent me a bouquet of flowers that are this big,” she tells the crowd, while using her hands to showcase the size of the floral arrangement.

The actor went on to recall that when she got to Amsterdam, she discovered another large bouquet of flowers. The trend continued with another gift in Cologne, before she received “six giant flower arrangements” at her final destination in Copenhagen.

She joked that her female friends thought these gifts were “so sweet,” while her male friends thought the man sending the flowers “sounded like a psychopath.”

“‘Hey are you OK, Ali? Do you feel safe?’” she quipped, imitating her male friends. “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.”

At the end of the special, the mother of two children – who she shared with Hakuta – confirmed that she was in a relationship with the person who sent her all these flowers, which was Hader.

“I have a new boyfriend now, I do,” she said. “I did fall in love again. Some of you might know who the guy is. And it just so happens to be the man who sent me all of those flowers in Europe.”

When the Netflix special was filmed in May 2024, she never mentioned Hader by name. However, according to Rolling Stone, Wong asked the crowd during her closing night, which was part of her 12-day stint at the “Netflix Is a Joke Fest,” if they wanted to meet her boyfriend.

“That was a very informative evening,” he joked when joining his girlfriend on stage.

In April 2023, Hader confirmed that he and Wong had rekindled their relationship after briefly dating in fall 2022. His representative confirmed the romance after he spoke about his girlfriend during an interview with Collider, where he didn’t originally refer to her by name.

“My girlfriend and I were just figuring out that I haven’t had a vacation in 10 years,” the Saturday Night Live alum told the publication last year, when asked about his plans after his comedy series, Barry, ended. “I went with her to San Francisco, but that doesn’t really count.”