Constance Wu’s Vulnerability Is Her Greatest Superpower
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."
Just a few years ago, Constance Wu was Hollywood’s next breakout star. After three years of starring in the ABC comedy Fresh Off the Boat as Jessica Huang, she earned a leading role in 2018’s rom-com and box office hit Crazy Rich Asians. It was a big moment for her—and for the Asian community—seeing a full Asian cast, and, more significantly, an Asian star as the protagonist of a rom-com.
Everything seemed promising for Wu, but in 2019, she found herself in the midst of internet vitriol when she tweeted how disappointed she was that Fresh Off the Boat was being renewed. The actress had projects in the pipeline she’d now have to put on hold because of the show getting another run. Her tweet came with a lot of commentary—that she was ungrateful or was exhibiting diva-like behavior.
In her memoir Making a Scene, Wu unpacks those events and others throughout her life. Throughout 18 essays rooted in self-reflection, she recalls her career highs and lows, the loves of her life, her theater background, and more harrowing topics like sexual harassment, rape, and a suicide attempt that followed the aforementioned internet hate.
In an interview with Oprah Daily, Wu spoke about the pressure of representation, the sexual harassment she endured, and how parenting changed her career.
Making a Scene shows the immense pressure you were under with the success of Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh Off the Boat. You even say you felt like “the one shining beacon of hope for Asian Americans.” How did the pressure affect you?
I swallowed a lot of abuse in order to preserve everybody else’s reputation and job on the show, and I realize how women do that a lot. They learn how to “handle it,” especially if it’s “not that bad,” which my harassment was not as bad objectively as what some women have had to go through, but it was harassment, it was intimidation, and it was abuse. Yes, I handled it and I came out on top, but I shouldn’t have had to swallow it. I think that’s where the true burden comes in, because if there’s only one story a population has to represent them, there is the burden of being so great. True success will be when we can have stories out there that are actually not perfect but still are worthy of existence.
Repression serves no one. It just is another way of strengthening the systemic burden of a model minority that has been placed upon Asian Americans. The way to dismantle that is not by defying it willingly but just by being honest with yourself. There were so many things for me to navigate at the time, being so new to the industry, that it was hard to have a clearer picture of it. But I’m an artist at heart—not a role model, not a symbol, not a movie star—and you have to stay true to your heart.
As you’re saying, context is key. Did you have to explain the tweeting situation a few years ago?
Anytime we start saying a public figure should or should not have behaved in a certain way, that’s passing judgment about behavior. What my book seeks to do is instead of passing judgment, ask the question, I wonder why somebody did that. You can have curiosity about somebody’s experience without condoning or condemning it. It’s just a way for you to understand humanity a little better, and that’s why I put the situation out there—to talk about the context of it, not to say that I was doing the right thing, not to defend myself or saying “This is why I did this,” but to ask people to ask different questions when they have emotional responses to something that happens in the world that they might not know the full context of.
How have you prioritized your mental health since that social media incident?
Jobs and strategy for your career—that’s all secondary to what it means to be a human. So, by focusing on your mental health, and by taking care of yourself as a person and understanding your past, you’re deepening yourself as a person and therefore deepening as an artist and contributing to your career. But many people don’t see it that way: They see career as this external thing that you have to keep jumping after, and I think it’s all related. What’s the point of having a big bank account if you’re really miserable inside?
What did you learn about yourself writing this book?
Writing this book made me recognize how I am just a naturally emotional person. I’ve always tried to suppress that because I wanted, like most kids, to be cool. I mean, what’s the definition of cool? It's like being unaffected, but I’m not that person. I’m a person who is deeply affected by things, so I might as well give into and accept my natural emotionality.
The first thing I’ve learned is to accept the fact that I’m just emotional and I always will be. The next step in my mental health journey will be hopefully trying to find a way not only to accept that but to love that about myself and to think of it as a gift rather than something I have to tolerate. I’ve just gotten to the point where it’s something I have learned to accept and allow. And one day, hopefully, it’ll be something I love about myself, but I am still working on that.
The very thing that makes us human and different from an animal out in the wild is our ability to have this empathy, emotion, and connection to art rather than just a means of survival. Our feelings are our privilege to have, so why not have them instead of trying to be the “cool girl”?
What do you want next for your career?
I still want to do meaningful acting jobs, and my biggest goal has always been to do something different than the last thing I did. I like to stretch my muscles as an actor. That remains the same, but now there are certain priorities in terms of what will afford me the most time to spend with my daughter. A lot of my choices revolve around that because she is my joy more so than my work.
With parenting, you have to be in the moment because you don’t know if your baby’s going to puke in your hair or say her first word. You really just have to go with what’s happening and respond in the moment.
When I was younger, I was always hustling to get somewhere, to prove something or be somebody, but once you’re a parent, it’s actually not about hustling to get anywhere. It’s about connecting and enjoying the moment, watching your daughter taste a strawberry for the first time and just being there for it and enjoying it. I think it’s just grounded me in a way that really makes me enjoy the present—which is why I feel more myself than I’ve ever been.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You Might Also Like
