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Ali Wong’s 2 Kids: All About Mari and Nikki

Related: Browse more celebrity guides, Nikki Sixx’s 5 Children: Everything You Should Know About His Sons and Daughters and Julianne Moore’s 2 Kids: Everything to Know About Caleb Freundlich and Liv Freundlich.

Ali Wong’s daughters are the tiny muses behind her 2019 New York Times bestseller Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life.

Wong and her ex-husband, Justin Hakuta, were married for almost ten years before splitting in April 2022 and finalizing their divorce in May 2024. Together, they co-parent two daughters: Mari, 10, and Nikki, 8.

In a 2024 interview with InStyle, Wong praised Hakuta for helping her embrace her “non-traditional” motherhood style—along with the support she gets from her own mom.

“It’s mostly because of her and the father of my children that I’ve been able to do everything I do,” she said.

Wong was famously pregnant during both of her breakout Netflix specials—Baby Cobra (2016) and Hard Knock Wife (2018)—which catapulted her into comedy superstardom.

After Baby Cobra took off, Wong was offered a book deal. At first, she had no idea what to write—until she remembered a heartfelt letter her late father, Adolphus Wong, once wrote her before his passing in 2011. That memory sparked the idea for a book written as letters to her own daughters.

“I remembered my dad had written me this letter that started with ‘Dear Alexandra,’ ” she told Ellen DeGeneres. “It was really sweet, but it was short, and I wish he had written more.” She explained that she never got the chance to ask him about his life before he became her dad—about growing up poor, about everything she never got to know.
Her own girls, she noted, only know her after she performed a comedy special while pregnant with each of them. “They don’t know everything that I went through to get to where I am,” she said.

Motherhood hasn’t just inspired her book—it’s fueled her comedy. And while Wong openly discusses the realities of parenting, she never jokes about her daughters specifically.

Here’s everything to know about the two kids who appear in spirit throughout her work.

Mari Hakuta, 10

Mari was born in November 2015 via C-section. Wong was pregnant with her during Baby Cobra, where her onstage presence—in a tight red dress with a fully visible bump—became iconic.

In a 2018 New York Times interview, she joked that she intentionally gave her daughter a Japanese first name (in honor of Hakuta’s heritage) and his surname because “there’s not a lot of sign of me in her name… I think subconsciously I did that to try and ensure he would love her.”

In Dear Girls, Wong also wrote candidly about being diagnosed with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) at 30 weeks. Doctors told her that Mari wasn’t growing enough and would eventually get better nutrition outside the womb than inside it. She delivered her before 37 weeks.

After Mari was born, Wong tried—briefly—to be a stay-at-home mom. It lasted eight weeks. “Mari was so easy and chill,” she wrote, “and still at the end of the day I was completely exhausted.”

When Mari became a big sister, Wong revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2018 that the adjustment was… dramatic. Mari, then 2, was “very jealous at first.”

“Having a 2-year-old is really hard,” Wong said. “I feel like I’m in a relationship with an emotionally unstable woman who is also physically abusive and never gets in trouble for it. She kicked me in the neck today for rationing her Thin Mints.”

Wong also shared her now-iconic motherhood mantra:
“I have suffered enough.”
She joked that the phrase helps her shake off mom guilt—especially when dinner ends up being a bag of chips.

In a 2019 TIME interview, she recalled one of Mari’s early comedy moments: at around age 1½, Mari would fart and then immediately stare her mom down and say, dead serious, “No.” Wong said the comedic timing was impeccable.

Nikki Hakuta, 8

Nikki arrived in December 2017, and Wong was pregnant with her while filming Hard Knock Wife. She knew she wanted her children close in age—unlike her own family, where she was the youngest of four with a 10–15 year age gap.

“They lived a whole different life before I was born,” she wrote in Dear Girls. “There are photos of them on skis. By the time I came around, my parents weren’t hitting the slopes—they were hitting the Metamucil.”

As a touring mom, Wong often travels with both daughters. During her 2019 Vanity Fair interview, it was reported that Mari, Nikki, Hakuta, and either a nanny or relatives joined her on the road during her Milk & Money tour. Their days included children’s museums and science centers; their nights, Wong performing onstage.

She continues to take her daughters on tour. In a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she explained that touring with kids is “the opposite of film and television,” where she’s gone all day.
“Taking kids on the road is so beautiful… it’s a really fun family adventure,” she said.

Despite joking about Hakuta in her standup, Wong stays away from telling jokes about her daughters.
“I’d need their permission,” she told the outlet. “And they’re 5 and 7—they don’t fully understand what I do.”
Plus, she admitted, she genuinely loves being around them now, making complaints feel “cliché and contrived.”

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