“I’m Vietnamese. Of course I like to gamble,” says Ali Wong. But the comedian and actress has become so popular that she’s had to change her game. She states, “I used to like craps, but it started to feel too much like a performance with an audience when I’m rolling the dice, so now blackjack is my favorite.”
Wong, 37, is now such a large draw that she will be playing four shows at the Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas on Labor Day weekend, August 31 to September 1. The versatile performer has appeared in films like Always Be My Maybe (which she cowrote) and Oliver Stone’s Savages. She was also a regular on the ABC series Black Box and was a writer for the boundary-breaking ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, about an Asian American family.
Standup, though, is where she makes her bones. With hitters onstage like her view on Asian men—“... no body odor. None. They just smell like responsibility”—and on social media like her take on her body image—“If I ever do a nude scene, I want to be in shape just enough so nobody calls me ‘courageous’ for doing it”—it’s easy to see why Wong draws such a diverse crowd.
But her relationship with her audience is special. Perhaps her fans feel a celebratory kinship with Wong since the comic filmed both her popular Netflix standup specials while she was pregnant; her breakout hit Baby Cobra was shot when she was seven months pregnant with her first child, and her followup Hard Knock Wife, released on Netflix May 13, was filmed when she was carrying her second child.
Wong feels a special connection to those who come to see her perform in our city. “I love that my show is part of a greater celebration for a lot of people in Las Vegas. Sometimes it’s an anniversary or a babymoon. It’s just very flattering and unreal to be a part of things like that.” Dinner packages from $100, wynnlasvegas.com
Photography by: Photography by Ali Wong
