Tuca & Bertie instantly won the heart of Netflix subscribers when it aired in 2019. It just resonates with a wide range of audiences — the comic journey of two women in their '30s, navigating their adult lives. But despite its successful first season, the show was canceled less than three months after its premiere. Lead voice actors, Tiffany Haddish, 41, and Ali Wong, 39, were also disappointed. Showrunner Lisa Hanawalt, 38, who also produced the Netflix hit animated series, BoJack Horseman, said she "felt blindsided" by the streaming company's decision.
But almost two years since its end, the show found a new home in Adult Swim, an adult-oriented network known for showing Dan Harmon's Rick and Morty and Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy and American Dad. With season 2 already out on the network, Haddish and Wong are looking forward to the recently confirmed season 3. In recent interviews, they've also revealed how their relationship isn't that far from their characters'. Here's everything you should know about their real-life friendship.
How Tiffany Haddish And Ali Wong Landed Their 'Tuca & Bertie' Roles
Speaking to Collider, the comedians opened up about getting into the animated series. "It was pretty easy. They said that one of the artists from BoJack Horseman is coming up with this new concept called Tuca & Bertie, and asked me if I'd be interested in," said Haddish who plays the free-spirited Tuca. "'I'm interested, I like BoJack.' Then they were like, 'Yeah, how do you feel about Ali Wong?' I was like, 'I love that b--ch, and let's do it!'" But apparently, Wong wasn't the only actress competing for the part of Bertie, the introverted songbird.
"They had me audition for it," said the Always Be My Maybe star. "And I knew that they were nervous about me because Bertie's very anxious, and they felt like maybe I was too confident to play Bertie. But then I auditioned, and then they paired up my voice against what they recorded with Tiffany, and they were like, 'Oh, the chemistry is really, really good.'" Their fans couldn't agree more. Wong also shared that The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun, the voice behind Bertie's boyfriend Speckles, texted her when she was cast. "Oh, so Ali, so I guess I'm your boyfriend now," he wrote. However, the actress didn't get it at first.
"And I was so confused because I thought that he was possibly accusing me of spreading rumors that he was my boyfriend, that we had hooked up," the Dear Girls author said. "And I was like, 'What are you talking about?' I had no idea that he had auditioned for Speckle. I knew that a lot of my friends had auditioned for Speckle, and they were so disappointed that they hadn't gotten the role. But I was so excited that it was Steven. It was the first thing I ever got to work on with Steven." Tuca & Bertie was also Wong and Haddish's first collaboration although they'd been planning on working together for years.
Are Tiffany Haddish And Ali Wong Friends In Real Life?
The two actresses met in 2009, long before they were famous. It was at The Punchline, a club in San Francisco. "Wow. Yeah, we was some busted comics, man," Haddish recalled. "We were poor, she was in her emo stage, I was in my ho stage. We both were skinny and hungry. We weren't very funny yet, but we were on our way." During the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, Wong said the Girls Trip actress was also "so positive and so sweet then, even though it was the sh--tiest time" as they "were struggling and everything."
"And then I saw her the next time in New York, when she had auditioned for SNL," the Ali Wong: Baby Cobra star continued. "Everybody around town knew she killed it. She knew she killed it, and she was like, 'If they don’t give it to me, it’s f--ked up.'" Right after Haddish's audition, she was cast in Girls Trip with Jada Pinkett-Smith and Queen Latifah. "We balance each other out," Haddish said of her dynamic with Wong. "I can be really over-the-top sometimes. And I look in her eyes and I’m reminded that I can bring it back down a little bit. It just depends. [She tells Wong] I really value you a lot."
Tiffany Haddish And Ali Wong Almost Did A Remake Of 'Demolition Man'
The pair's chemistry is just out of this world that at one point, they were talks of them remaking Demolition Man, a 1993 sci-fi action starring Sylvester Stallone, 75. "There's been many conversations about a bunch of projects for me and Tiffany to work together," Wong told Decider of the many years they planned on collaborating prior to Tuca & Bertie. "[Asks Haddish], Tiffany, did you ever hear about that one, that there was a discussion of us doing our version of Demolition Man?" Haddish answered: "I was like, 'For real?'." She then joked that she would have chosen to play Stallone's role, John Spartan. That would have been hilarious.
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