Constance Wu has been very candid as of late during the press tour for her book Making A Scene, and now she’s opening up more about the alleged sexual harassment and intimidation she experienced on the set of Fresh Off The Boat.
On the October 5 episode of Red Table Talk, Wu spoke about how she felt betrayed by her own community after she tweeted her disappointment that Fresh Off the Boat had been renewed. She mentioned a joke that Shang-Chi star Simu Liu made at a gala that took place after Wu’s suicide attempt. When she agreed to appear at the gala, the producers assured her that no jokes would be made at her expense.
“There’s this organization called CAPE [Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment] and they do this gala every year for Asians, and they wanted me to come ’cause they wanted to celebrate the show and the kids on the show,” Wu told the Red Table Talk panel, which consists of Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“At that time, there was so much controversy around me that I was like if I go, people are just gonna want to talk about the tweets. And like, I love my kids on the show so much. I want this to be a moment for them to celebrate.”
Wu continued, “I told them, ‘I don’t want anybody to make fun of it ’cause I’m still in a very raw place about it. I’m not ready to be mocked for it. But I expressed that I can’t deal with that. They promised me. They said, ‘No, no, no, no. We love Constance. It’ll only be warm energy and positive vibes towards her.’ So I was like, ‘OK, OK, I’ll go,‘ and they sat me, like, in the front row and, like, had all these cameras on me and within 10 minutes, the host of the show made a crack at me.” Wu added that the joke “felt like a betrayal from the Asian American community.”
The Crazy Rich Asians star then shared that Liu has since apologized to her, but she still feels like her community is “avoiding me. I feel the disapproval but rather than being blatant, the silence of how much people reached out to me before, pre-tweet versus post-tweet. And you can tell. The silence has an effect.”
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