See the cover of Crazy Rich Asians star Constance Wu's upcoming memoir Making a Scene
Constance Wu, star of Hustlers, Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh Off the Boat, has written a memoir that will be published this fall, EW has learned exclusively. "Long time no see!" she says in a video announcement (above). "Today is my 40th birthday, so I thought I would tell you guys what I've been up to, that not a lot of people know: I had two babies over the pandemic...The first baby I had is a human kind of baby, I had a daughter. And the second baby I gave birth to is a book baby." Titled Making a Scene, the book is an essay collection that recounts Wu's experiences "growing up in suburban Virginia, scraping by as a struggling actress, falling in love again and again, confronting her identity and influence, and navigating the pressures and pleasures of existing in today's world," according to the book's publisher, Scribner.
The actress — who will also narrate the audiobook version of the memoir — shared the following statement with EW on the experience of writing the book:
"This book was a total surprise to me. When I first started writing it, I imagined a radical activist tome that would stun the world and start a revolution. I'd sit down at my computer with an inflated sense of self-importance, write twenty pages in a manic frenzy, shut my laptop with a flourish of accomplishment, only to read it the next morning and realize this is crap. Yikes. And it was crap. Obnoxious, arrogant, all-over-the-place. Depressed, I'd chuck the whole thing. The "delete" button almost fell off my keyboard from overuse. But sometimes, in the wreckage of those pages, I'd find one little nugget of an honest story: the early sting of a schoolteacher's accusation, the feel of kneading cold, flour-y dough between my fingers, burgundy paint peeling off the hood of an old car. Sometimes it was only a sentence. But when I took that little nugget and gave it room to grow into what it wanted to be, rather than what my ego wanted it to be, this book became. So it's not political or even opinionated, really. Instead, Making a Scene is a tribute to the people and events that have shaped my humanity and determined the direction of my life. Writing it taught me to look back on formative memories with curiosity and attention, rather than my old patterns of judgment and shame. It was a practice I found healing and heartening. My hope for this book is that it might encourage readers to look at their own lives in this way, too. My hope is that it will be helpful."
Simon and Schuster
Wu will next be seen on Amazon Prime Video's The Terminal List in July. Making a Scene will be published by Scribner Oct. 4, 2022 and is available for preorder here.
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