Ali Ahn comes prepared, and then the stories start spilling.
Actress Ali Ahn, from shows we adore like The Diplomat, comes prepared for podcast Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim — and very quickly proves she has stories for nearly every direction Ego takes the conversation.
Ali talks about being friends before dating, psychics, family, acting, having a very specific sweet tooth and so much more. Dig in and click play right below.
Thanks Dad
Ali Ahn has stories — and receipts.
From The Diplomat and audition tapes to psychics, family and a romance that started with Romeo and Juliet, Ali Ahn settles in with Ego Nwodim.
Some links may be affiliate links. INYIM may earn from qualifying purchases.
The conversation gets personal almost immediately. Ahn explains that she and longtime partner William Jackson Harper were friends and theater collaborators before anything romantic happened. The two eventually played Romeo and Juliet together, and after weeks of rehearsals and mutual zero-game energy, friendship finally tipped into something more.
They have now been together for 14 years, and Ahn says the friendship underneath the relationship still matters — especially when the two actors are helping each other with self-tapes. Her style is direct: tell her what is wrong, fix the hair, get the shot, move on.
Ahn also talks candidly about not having children, saying she loves kids and has several godchildren, but that parenthood is not in the cards for her and Harper. Part of that realization came from years of both of them being broke actors in New York and valuing the freedom and adventure of the life they built together.
Then comes the wonderfully woo-woo turn. Ahn says she has long been fascinated by Korean shamanism, numerology and psychics. She even admits she was once convinced to bring eggs to someone who claimed there was a curse on her family — a story she tells while fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds, and yet, in the moment, she still brought the eggs.
That leads naturally back to her parents. Ahn says her father gave her the ability to read people quickly and, perhaps more importantly for an actor, made her tough. His feedback was never soft, so by the time rejection became part of her professional life, she had already heard tougher notes at home. As she puts it, when she talks to her dad, she has to come in prepared.
Before acting paid the bills, Ahn spent years tutoring, including SAT prep and writing. She loved working with engaged students but drew a hard line at parents asking her to simply write their kids’ essays for them. Nobody wrote hers, she says, and she was not about to start doing it for somebody else.
And because no Thanks Dad hang should stay serious for too long, the conversation eventually lands on dessert. Ahn likes cake, is surprisingly neutral on chocolate and has one hilariously specific cookie preference: essentially a chocolate-chip cookie without the chocolate chips. Brown-butter cookie energy, plain and proud.
It is exactly the kind of episode that starts with The Diplomat and somehow ends up covering psychics, subway falls, family feedback, romance, tutoring ethics and the proper ratio of things inside a dessert. In other words: Ego asks, Ali comes prepared.
Ali Ahn on Thanks Dad With Ego Nwodim
Ali Ahn joins Ego Nwodim for a wide-ranging conversation about The Diplomat, William Jackson Harper, family, psychics, acting, kids and her very particular dessert opinions.
Source and images: Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim.
