Ali Wong
Chinese + Vietnamese/American
Actress/Comedian/Writer
Website: aliwong.com
Instagram: @aliwong
Born in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, Ali Wong is the youngest of four children, and the daughter of an American-born Chinese father and Vietnamese mother who immigrated to the U.S.
Growing up, Ali’s household was dominated by Chinese culture, and the Vietnamese side was subdued. Ali attributes her mother’s lack of pride in Vietnamese culture to several things. Particularly in the U.S., her mother came alone in 1960 and had to grow up with hardly any other Vietnamese people. And when she attended Duchesne college in Omaha, Nebraska (defunct in 1968), nuns at the “college taught her that in order to survive and assimilate in America, she had to forget her Vietnamese culture.”
In high school, Ali gained a better understanding of her Vietnamese side and later decided to major in Asian-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). And in junior year, she studied abroad in Hanoi, Vietnam in order to learn the language. “I wanted to gain access to the Vietnamese-American community, my mother’s history and my own identity.”
UCLA is also where she discovered her love for performing as a member of Lapu, the Coyote that Cares Theatre Company (LCC) – the longest running Asian-American theater company in the United States. In 2004, Ali stated: “By creating complex characters and relationships through dialogue, I have the power to portray Asian Americans as multidimensional human beings.”
After graduating in 2005, Ali moved to New York to pursue her stand-up comedy career. And by 2011, Variety named her one of “10 Comics to Watch.”
She has appeared in numerous TV series and films, including: The Tonight Show (2011), Breaking In (2011), Chelsea Lately (2012), Hey Girl (2013), Best Week Ever (2013), The Angry Birds Movie (voice, 2016), American Housewife (2016), and Baby Cobra (a stand-up special, which she performed while 7-months pregnant; it was released on Netflix in 2016).
Ali has also headlined Comedy Works in Denver, Caroline’s on Broadway in New York, and since 2014, has writing credits on ABC’s critically acclaimed series “Fresh Off the Boat.”
Sources: Discoveries Terrible and Magnificent, LCC Theatre Company, NBC News and Variety