Ali Wong reflects on her Smithsonian-worthy career accomplishment on Hot Ones

Ali Wong recently won an Emmy for her performance in Beef, but having the dress from her Baby Cobra comedy special displayed at the Smithsonian (alongside Muhammed Ali’s robe and Prince’s guitar) is also “pretty up there” in terms of her career accomplishments. To make it all the sweeter, her kids, ex-husband, and boyfriend Bill Hader all came to visit while she was performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and saw the exhibit. “To have all of them with me, just as meaningful as the dress itself, you know, being in the museum,” she shares on the latest episode of Hot Ones. 

When the group went to the exhibit, “I was shocked I was so emotional. And my daughter Mari, who I was pregnant with at the time, she pointed at it and she was so excited. She was like, ‘That’s me in there!'” Wong recalled. That’s a pretty hard moment to top, but “I think even more meaningful than that is when people dress up in a striped dress and shove a pillow under there for Halloween,” she says. “It’s happened every year since, and that’s probably my favorite thing—that’s my favorite superlative that’s happened.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Wong—who is promoting her new Netflix special Single Lady as well as the streamer’s upcoming animated series Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld—discussed previous specials, her days on student council, and her favorite scenes to shoot from Beef. She also shared her philosophy of failure in comedy. “You know how a lot of people, they don’t remember their successes, they just focus on their failures? So then when you fail, you can’t help but think about it, and then hopefully it will motivate you to improve it,” she says. “You don’t want to be one of those comics who just like, is always killing, always doing the same stuff all the time. And then also I think getting embarrassed is a really powerful motivator too. Because you’re like, ‘God, that was so embarrassing, I don’t want to be embarrassed again.'”