She’s earned critical acclaim for her performance in her Netflix comedy Beef.

And in an unearthed interview, star Ali Wong has revealed she convinced Netflix bosses to ‘spend all the money’ so she could kiss Keanu Reeves in her 2019 film Always Be My Maybe.

The actress, who both wrote and starred in the romantic comedy, admitted she was responsible for the surprise smooch when The Matrix star made a cameo in the film.

During an appearance on The Ellen Show in 2019, Ali said: ‘I kiss a lot of men. It’s like, who wrote this movie, right?

‘I kiss a lot of sexy men. I kiss Daniel Dae Kim. I kiss Keanu Reeves. I basically made Netflix spend all this money on a movie just so I could kiss Daniel Dae Kim and Keanu Reeves.’

Ali also shared her delight at getting Keanu to appear in the film, saying it was easy to establish chemistry with him because she’d been married to her husband Justin Hakuta for ’10 years.’

She added: ‘I’ve been with the same dude for 10 years. I would have chemistry with a turtle at this point.’

Ali and Justin, who have two daughters, split in 2022 after 10 years together.

Always Be My Maybe focused on celebrity chef Sasha Tran (played by Ali) and her former childhood friend Marcus Kim (played by Randall Pak), who reconnect as adults after a teenage fling ended their friendship.

Beef has currently has an impressive 100 percent fresh rating from the most prestigious critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes.

In the show, Steven Yeun plays a contractor, while Wong sells plants, and both become inextricably entwined after they almost crash their cars into each other and become obsessed with making each other’s lives a living nightmare.

While speaking to the Wall Street Journal for a profile of Yeun, Wong admitted that she was anxious about working with him after he had amassed a string of critically acclaimed roles in recent years, along with an Oscar nomination.

‘I was intimidated by Steven, because he’s such an incredible actor,’ she said.

Sensational! The actress, who both wrote and starred in the romantic comedy, admitted she was responsible for the surprise smooch when The Matrix star made a cameo in the film

Drama: Always Be My Maybe focused on celebrity chef Sasha Tran and her former childhood friend Marcus Kim (played by Randall Pak), who reconnect as adults after a teenage fling

Lauded: It comes after Ali’s new comedy series Beef, where she stars with Steven Yeun, earned an impressive 100 percent fresh rating from critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes

After she admitted how on edge she was about sharing scenes with him, she recalled his response: ‘He just shrugged, looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t know anything that you don’t know.” That really set the tone for everything.’

While chatting with NPR about Beef, Yeun shared that he and Wong had met each other before the show, but they didn’t really know each other before they were cast, which led to a happy surprise once they were finally working together.

‘I think coming onto this show, I couldn’t fully see what was happening or what was possible until we started reading together,’ he said. ‘And I was like, ooh, this is going to be fun.’

He praised her ‘nurturing’ persona for creating a safe off-camera context for them to dig into darker emotions on set.

‘Ali also has just this really warm personality and just warm presence that is really inviting, that is really nurturing and caring,’ he gushed. ‘And when you can feel safe and connected to each other off camera, you can really lay into each other on camera.’

Yeun also noted that the series was able to highlight the class divide between the two characters by focusing on a predominately Asian-American cast.

‘We just kind of, like, flattened that whole landscape by being like, it’s all Asian people. So now we can just get to who these people are,’ he explained. ‘Then anyone can access them. Then it’s an open door and an invitation for anyone to sit at the table respectfully and eat from our table, too, and connect with us as human beings.’

All 10 episodes of Beef are currently available to stream on Netflix…