How Keanu Reeves helps Randall Park and Ali Wong find love in Always Be My Maybe
- Asian Americans Park and Wong have known each other since late 1990s, and wanted to do their own version of rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally
- The Netflix movie, which the close friends co-wrote, also stars Reeves, who plays an outlandish parody of himself
Randall Park and Ali Wong met in the late 1990s at a fried-rice cooking competition hosted by a mutual friend from the LCC Theatre Company, an Asian American performance group Park co-founded while attending UCLA.
That is what Wong would say, at least. Too much time has passed for Park to recall how they met, so he shares her story because, as he recently said over the phone, “she has a great memory”.
The pair hit it off creatively, collaborating frequently in the years that followed. They performed in the same improvisation comedy group, and she used to take him around different venues in San Francisco when they both did stand-up.
The notion of working on a movie together was something they only casually floated due to a shared love of romantic comedies. Then, Wong offhandedly mentioned their desire to make “our version of When Harry Met Sally” in a 2016 interview with The New Yorker.
The idea gained traction. Suddenly, strangers began to express how much they, too, wanted the movie: “Dear Hollywood, Please Make Ali Wong and Randall Park’s Dream Rom-Com,” Vulture pleaded.