Keanu Reeves loves Wong so much that, after she reached out to his people with a long-shot ask—would the very busy movie star appear in the aforementioned rom-com (and not, by the way, as the male lead)?—he not only agreed but requested an audience with her, in which he quoted some of her stand-up and launched into an impromptu martial-arts interpretation of her specials. Exceedingly modest, she only admits this after I press her for details of the meeting: “I watched both specials…. You took no prisoners,” Wong recalls Reeves saying. “You were like”—she gestures karate-chopping the air, then mimes biting a grenade and throwing it.

“When the invitation came to act with Ali in her film, I was honored,” Reeves tells me in an e-mail. “To have had the opportunity to work with such a brave, talented artist and great person was a joy and inspiring.” Reeves’s commitment to the role, and Wong, is wonderfully apparent in his laugh-out-loud scenes—he gives great, comedic gusto.

So, yes, in the words of Chris Rock, everybody kind of loves Ali Wong—if “kind of” is a superstitious qualifier Rock uses to ward off bad luck for his protégée. When Rock first met Wong, she was writing full-time on Fresh Off the Boat and driving around after-hours to various clubs for what was essentially her second full-time job: perfecting her routine. When she was expecting her first daughter, she was nervous, as most pregnant career women are, that the baby might mark the end of her professional life. But Rock sensed it was just the beginning and reassured her. “With the exception of Eddie Murphy and, like, Pete Davidson now, there’s not really that many young comedians,” he tells me. “There’s no Justin Bieber lane of comedy. It doesn’t work that way. So you find success generally from grown-ups—they’re young grown-ups but grown-ups. So I told her the kid’s only going to help. Marriage only helps. Life only helps.”

Wong’s clocked plenty of such adult experience in the last three years. In addition to birthing and caring for two humans, recovering from two C-sections, adjusting to motherhood, and co-starring on three seasons of American Housewife, she wrote Dear Girls and a new stand-up act; voiced Netflix’s Tuca & Bertie with Tiffany Haddish; and co-wrote, produced, and starred in Always Be My Maybe. “She doesn’t just sit back and wait for the world to discover her,” Fresh Off the Boat show-runner Nahnatchka Khan says of Wong’s work ethic. “She’s constantly trying to get better and perfecting her craft in all elements, whether it’s writing or performing.” She’s been so busy that the wildness of this roller coaster only seemed to crystallize for Wong and her husband recently—when both Lauryn Hill and Kobe Bryant introduced themselves as fans, at one of Hill’s concerts. “Your life has changed,” Hakuta told her, before correcting himself. “Our lives have changed.”

Asked whether Hakuta has any issue or insecurity around his wife’s suddenly palling around with the likes of Reeves, Wong says, “I hang out with the most professionally funny men in the world. So he had to deal with that a long time ago. He is very proud, but he’s kinda like … I think he finds it more surreal.”

The key for them, according to Wong, has been staying “mindful and conscious of how we are feeling through these transitions. But he’s happy.” Even though taking a family on tour sounds daunting, I get the sense that, for Wong, traveling from one city and stand-up venue to the next is more comfortable than sitting, stationary, in her bubbling fame. “It’s given us the opportunity to spend a lot of quality time together as a family,” she says. Later, when I ask Rock about the intimidating logistics of taking a family on tour, he waves off my skepticism. “Diana Ross did it when she was on the road,” he points out. “Country music stars do it. Once you get out of the clubs and are playing concert venues, you’re just a performer. You’re playing the same venues as musicians.”