Boaz Dov Wong: The Short Life of BD Wong’s Twin Son
Some lives are measured in decades, and some in minutes. Boaz Dov Wong lived for about ninety minutes. He was born on 28 May 2000, the twin son of actor BD Wong and his then-partner, talent agent Richie Jackson, and he died the same day, in the first hours of a life that had barely begun. His twin brother, Jackson Foo Wong, survived, and grew up to become the centre of his fathers’ world. Boaz Dov Wong never got that chance, and his name is known today almost entirely because of the book his father wrote about losing him.
This is a sensitive story, and it deserves to be told with care. Among the many celebrity stories about famous families, this one is not about glamour or success. It is about two men who wanted a child, the medical journey they went through to have one, and the loss that came with the birth. It is also about what came after: a memoir, a surviving son, and a family that found a way to carry both joy and grief at the same time.
This article explains who Boaz Dov Wong was, how he came into the world, what happened on the day he was born, and how his short life shaped the family he left behind. Where a detail cannot be checked, it is flagged as such. A child who lived for ninety minutes deserves an honest account, not a sensational one.
Boaz Dov Wong Quick Facts
- Full name: Boaz Dov Wong
- Born: 28 May 2000, United States
- Died: 28 May 2000, about ninety minutes after birth
- Parents: Actor BD Wong and talent agent Richie Jackson
- Twin brother: Jackson Foo Wong, who survived
- Cause of death: Complications of premature birth, including twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome
- Known for: His father’s memoir Following Foo, which tells the story of his birth and death
- Burial and memorial: No public details have been published
Who Was Boaz Dov Wong?
Boaz Dov Wong was the first-born twin son of BD Wong, the American actor best known for his Tony-winning stage work and his long television career, and Richie Jackson, a talent agent and later a Broadway producer. He was conceived through in-vitro fertilisation, using BD Wong’s sperm and an egg donated by Richie Jackson’s sister, and carried by a surrogate mother. The plan was for the child to carry the heritage of both fathers: Chinese on BD Wong’s side and Jewish on Jackson’s side.
He was born three months early, at 28 weeks, along with his twin brother Jackson Foo Wong. The boys were tiny and in immediate medical trouble. Boaz Dov Wong, the donor twin in a case of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, was fatally anaemic, and he died about ninety minutes after he was born. His brother Jackson, who weighed only two pounds thirteen ounces, survived after three months in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Boaz Dov Wong had no career, no public life, and no photographs in the press. His entire public record is his birth, his death, and the book his father wrote about both. That is a small record, but it is not a small story, because it changed everyone around him.
BD Wong and Richie Jackson: The Road to Parenthood
To understand the birth of Boaz Dov Wong, it helps to know the two men who became his fathers. BD Wong, born Bradley Darryl Wong on 24 October 1962 in San Francisco, was already a well-known actor by the late 1990s. He had won a Tony Award in 1988 for his role in David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly, becoming the first Asian actor to win a Tony for acting, and he was building a television career that would later include long runs on Oz and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Richie Jackson was a talent agent, born on 6 October 1965, who later became a Broadway and television producer. The two men began their relationship in 1988, when BD Wong was still closeted, and they were together for sixteen years. By the late 1990s, they had decided they wanted a child, and they began to look into surrogacy.
That decision was unusual for its time. In 1999, surrogacy for a gay couple was far less common and far less straightforward than it is today. There were legal hurdles, medical questions, and social attitudes to deal with. The couple went through a California agency, and the plan they settled on was carefully thought through: the surrogate would carry the child, BD Wong would provide the sperm, and Jackson’s sister, who was already a mother herself, would donate the egg. The child would be, in the words of those who knew the couple, a blend of both families.
The Surrogacy Journey
The surrogacy process took months of planning. The couple found a surrogate mother through a California agency. She was a woman named Shauna, who already had two children of her own. The embryos were created by in-vitro fertilisation and implanted successfully. Everything seemed to be going to plan, and the couple began to prepare for the arrival of their child.
Then the pregnancy ran into trouble. Shauna went into early labour, months before the babies were due. The twins were born in May instead of August, at just 28 weeks, and the medical team had to act fast. The boys were rushed into intensive care, and the next hours would decide everything.
BD Wong later wrote about this period in his memoir, Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man, published in 2003. The book began as a series of emails he sent to friends and family while the events were happening, and it keeps the raw, day-by-day feel of those messages. It is an unusually honest book about becoming a parent, and it does not hide the fear, the confusion, or the grief.
The Birth on 28 May 2000
Boaz Dov Wong and his twin brother Jackson Foo Wong were born on 28 May 2000. The birth was premature and dangerous for both babies. The boys had suffered from twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a condition in which one twin receives too much blood from the shared placenta and the other too little. Boaz Dov Wong was the donor twin, the one who had given blood to his brother, and he was born fatally anaemic.
The medical team worked to save both boys, but Boaz Dov Wong’s condition was too severe. He died about ninety minutes after he was born. His brother Jackson, though also in a critical state, had a chance. He weighed only two pounds thirteen ounces, his lungs were immature, and his colon was blocked. He had to be flown by chartered plane to another hospital for specialist care, and he spent three months in a neonatal intensive care unit before he was well enough to go home.
For the two fathers, the day held both the worst news and the best news at the same time. One son was gone, and the other was fighting for his life. BD Wong has described the experience as the hardest thing he has ever lived through, and the memoir he wrote about it is, in many ways, an attempt to make sense of a day that did not make sense.
Ninety Minutes
It is hard to write about a life that lasted ninety minutes without sounding trite, and the honest thing is to say that Boaz Dov Wong’s life was almost entirely a medical event. He was born, he was held, he was treated, and he died. There were no first words, no first steps, no photographs of a childhood. There was a name, a birth, and a death, all on the same day.
What gives those ninety minutes weight is what they meant to the people around him. For BD Wong and Richie Jackson, the loss of a child they had planned for, waited for, and fought to have was devastating. For Jackson Foo Wong, the surviving twin, the loss would become part of his own story, a brother he never knew and a shadow over the first months of his life. BD Wong has said that he came to see the loss as a gift in a painful sense: that Boaz Dov Wong’s death, in some way, made Jackson’s survival possible.
That is a difficult idea, and it is not one that everyone will accept. But it is the way BD Wong has spoken about it, and it is worth reporting as his view rather than as a fact. Grief does not follow rules, and people make sense of loss in the ways they can.
Jackson’s Fight to Survive
While Boaz Dov Wong died in the first hours, his brother Jackson faced a long and uncertain fight. Born at two pounds thirteen ounces, with immature lungs and a blocked colon, he needed specialist care that the first hospital could not provide. He was flown by chartered plane to another hospital, and he spent three months in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Those three months were a roller coaster for the family. There were good days and bad days, small improvements and sudden setbacks. BD Wong’s memoir follows the story day by day, through the emails he sent to friends, and it captures the strange mix of hope and fear that fills a neonatal intensive care unit. In the end, Jackson survived, and he went home to a family that had already lost one child.
Jackson Foo Wong grew up in Greenwich Village, New York, raised by his two fathers. He came out as gay at the age of 15, and his father Richie later wrote a book for him, Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son, published in 2019. Jackson graduated from college and, by his father’s account, lives in Long Island City, Queens. His life is his own, and this article does not go further into it than the public record allows.
Following Foo: The Memoir
BD Wong’s memoir, Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man, was published in 2003, three years after the birth. It is not a conventional memoir. It is built from the emails BD Wong sent to friends and family while the events were happening, starting with the premature birth of the twins and following Jackson’s long stay in intensive care. The book also serves as BD Wong’s public coming-out, and it includes a tribute to his Chinese-American family in San Francisco.
The title refers to Jackson, whose nickname was Foo, and to the electronic trail of messages that carried the family through the crisis. The book was widely praised for its honesty, and it remains the main source for what is known about Boaz Dov Wong. Without it, his story would be little more than a line in a biography. With it, the ninety minutes of his life have a context, a family, and a meaning.
BD Wong has spoken about the book in interviews since, and he has said that writing it helped him process what happened. He has also said that the loss changed him, and that it changed the way he thought about fatherhood, family, and luck.
The Family After the Loss
BD Wong and Richie Jackson stayed together for four more years after the birth, and they continued to raise Jackson as co-parents. Their relationship ended in 2004, sixteen years after it began. What followed was unusual for a celebrity break-up: the two men kept working together as parents, and they built a co-parenting arrangement that eventually included Richie’s new husband.
Richie Jackson married Broadway producer Jordan Roth on 8 September 2012. The couple met at the Tony Awards in June 2003, and their wedding had Jackson Foo Wong at its centre. In July 2016, Richie and Jordan welcomed a second son, Levi Emmanuel Roth, through surrogacy. Jackson became a big brother, and the family grew.
BD Wong married digital producer and designer Richert Schnorr in 2018, after eight years together. The wedding was a small, intimate, Jewish ceremony on the Brooklyn waterfront. BD Wong has spoken with quiet pride about raising his son across two households, and about the fact that Jackson later came out as gay himself.
Through all of this, Boaz Dov Wong has remained a part of the family story. He is the twin who did not survive, the brother Jackson never knew, and the child whose loss shaped the memoir that made his father famous as a writer as well as an actor.
Common Confusions About Boaz Dov Wong
Because the story is painful and the details are few, several errors and mix-ups appear online. It helps to clear up the most common ones.
Was Boaz Dov Wong the surviving twin? No. Boaz Dov Wong died about ninety minutes after birth. Jackson Foo Wong is the surviving twin. Some low-quality sites mix the two names up, and a few even describe Boaz as if he grew up. That is wrong. He lived for ninety minutes.
How long did he live? About ninety minutes. Some accounts say he died at birth, which is close but not exact. The most reliable accounts, including BD Wong’s own memoir and the reporting that draws on it, give ninety minutes.
What caused his death? Complications of premature birth, including twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. The twins were born at 28 weeks, three months early, and Boaz, as the donor twin, was fatally anaemic. Some sites describe the cause in vague terms, but the transfusion syndrome and the prematurity are the two factors the reliable sources name.
Did the couple have other children? BD Wong and Richie Jackson had only the twins together. Richie later had a son, Levi, with his husband Jordan Roth. BD Wong has no other children. Jackson Foo Wong is BD Wong’s only surviving child.
Is Following Foo about Boaz? The book is about the whole experience: the surrogacy, the premature birth, the loss of Boaz Dov Wong, and Jackson’s fight to survive. Boaz is at the heart of the early chapters, and his death is the event the rest of the book reckons with.
Was BD Wong married to Richie Jackson? No. They were partners for sixteen years, from 1988 to 2004, but they never married. BD Wong later married Richert Schnorr in 2018, and Richie Jackson married Jordan Roth in 2012.
Frequently Asked Questions About Boaz Dov Wong
Who was Boaz Dov Wong?
Boaz Dov Wong was the twin son of actor BD Wong and talent agent Richie Jackson, born on 28 May 2000. He died about ninety minutes after birth from complications of premature birth. His twin brother, Jackson Foo Wong, survived.
How did Boaz Dov Wong die?
He died from complications of being born three months premature, including twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. As the donor twin, he was born fatally anaemic and died about ninety minutes after birth.
Who is Jackson Foo Wong?
Jackson Foo Wong is the surviving twin brother of Boaz Dov Wong. He was born on 28 May 2000, weighed two pounds thirteen ounces, spent three months in a neonatal intensive care unit, and grew up in New York. He is BD Wong’s only surviving child.
What is Following Foo about?
Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man is BD Wong’s 2003 memoir about becoming a father through surrogacy, the premature birth of his twin sons, the death of Boaz Dov Wong, and Jackson’s fight to survive. It began as a series of emails BD Wong sent to friends while the events were happening.
Who are Boaz Dov Wong’s parents?
His parents were actor BD Wong, born Bradley Darryl Wong, and talent agent and producer Richie Jackson. They were partners from 1988 to 2004 and had the twins through surrogacy, using BD Wong’s sperm and an egg donated by Jackson’s sister.
Did BD Wong and Richie Jackson stay together?
No. Their relationship ended in 2004, four years after the twins were born. They continued to co-parent Jackson, and both later married other people: Richie Jackson married Jordan Roth in 2012, and BD Wong married Richert Schnorr in 2018.
Is there a grave or memorial for Boaz Dov Wong?
No public details about a burial or memorial have been published. The family has kept that part of the story private, and this article does not guess at it.
Conclusion
Boaz Dov Wong lived for about ninety minutes, and that is almost the whole of his story. He was born too early, too small, and too sick to survive, and he died on the same day he arrived. His twin brother lived, and his father wrote a book, and those two facts are the reason his name is still known more than twenty-five years later.
What his short life shows is how much can hang on a single day. Two men planned for a child for years, went through surrogacy and fertility treatment, and waited for a birth that came three months early and ended in loss. The family that came out of that day was not the family they had planned, but it was a family all the same: a surviving son, two fathers who kept parenting together after they split up, and a memoir that turned private grief into something other people could learn from.
He is remembered, in the end, not for anything he did, but for what his brief life meant to the people who loved him. That is a small legacy, but it is a real one, and it is the reason his name still appears in articles about his father, his brother, and the book that told his story. For readers who want to check the basic facts about his father and the memoir, a general reference is a good place to start, but the heart of this story is already clear: a child who lived for ninety minutes, and a family that never forgot him.
