Constance Wu cried while talking about the sexual harassment she suffered from a producer while working on the series Fresh Off the Boat.
The 40-year-old Richmond, Va. native appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday, where she said she initially “didn’t want to write” to include details of the aforementioned experience in her new Making a Scene book.
“That was the last essay I wrote for the book, and only after being pushed by my editor, like, ‘You should write about this. That’s what people want to hear,” the Crazy Rich Asians actress said. “And I was like, ‘I’m done with this chapter of my life.'”
The latest: Constance Wu, 40, cried as she spoke of the sexual harassment she suffered from a producer while working on the series Fresh Off the Boat appearing on Monday on Late Night with Seth Meyers
Wu said she was afraid of retaliation if she spoke out about the harassment when it was happening.
“I had never done anything big before,” she said. “I had just graduated as a waitress. I was afraid of being fired. Once I kind of felt a bit of job security, I started saying no to this producer, which pissed him off.
‘But it was okay, so I thought, ‘You know what? I took care of it.” I don’t need to sully the reputation of this show or this producer. I can just keep it inside.
Wu said she had “never really been able to be [herself] on set,” noting, “I would see my abuser being buddy-buddy with everyone, knowing what he did to me.
Wu said she “didn’t want to write” initially to include details of the aforementioned experience in her new book Making a Scene.
Wu told Meyers she was afraid of retaliation if she spoke out about the harassment when it was happening
The Crazy Rich Asians actress wiped away tears as she recounted her painful experience
Wu said her angst over what was happening led her to tweet about her disappointment that the series was renewed for a sixth season in 2019.
She tearfully said on the show, “What I’ve learned is that bad feelings and abuse don’t just go away because you want them to.”
‘It’s going to come out somewhere. I think people misunderstood the context of these tweets. And please don’t make fun of it, because it led me to a really dark time. (She revealed in July that she had attempted suicide amid backlash from her tweets.)
She told Meyers: “I decided to include it in the book because I think it’s important that we show curiosity and empathy before jumping straight into judgment, because if someone does something that doesn’t look like it, it usually means something is up”. in their life.’
Wu also detailed how she felt amid the backlash from her tweet three years ago when she appeared on Red Table Talk, in a preview for Wednesday’s episode.
“It’s actually hard for me to talk about it without getting emotional,” she said. “People have basically written me off for being ungrateful and ungraceful. They said I didn’t think about other people’s work on the show, how selfish it was, and how diva-like I was.
Wu said the backlash she received after tweeting her disdain for the show’s renewal in 2019 led to a “really dark time”.
Wu claims she was sexually harassed and bullied by a senior producer while working on ABC sitcom Fresh Off The Boat
She noted that the producer who harassed her “is an Asian American, but because this show was kind of a beacon of representation for Asian Americans, and me in a way, became a symbol of representation”.
“I didn’t want to smear the only show with sexual harassment allegations against the only Asian American male doing all this better work for the community.”
Wu first made the revelation in her upcoming new memoir, Making A Scene, and again when she spoke with the New York Times before the book comes out.
While the actress divulges details about how the man exhibited controlling behaviors during the show’s first two seasons, she would only refer to the man using an initial.
Loosely based on the life of chef and food personality Eddie Huang and his 2013 autobiography, Fresh Off The Boat was the first network television sitcom in the United States to feature an Asian American family as characters. principals in more than 20 years.
The show, which depicted a Taiwanese-American family living in Florida in the 1990s, went into production in 2014 and eventually premiered on ABC the following February to positive critical reception.
Wu argues that the producer began exhibiting these controlling behaviors in the first season, including “demanding that she do all her business in front of him and telling him what to wear.”
“Fresh Off the Boat was my very first TV show,” the actress told The Times, before explaining her state of mind at the time. “I was thrown into this world. I don’t have any relatives in the industry. And because I was 30, people thought I knew what I was doing. It made me paranoid and embarrassed.
Impactful: Loosely based on the life of chef and cooking personality Eddie Huang and his 2013 autobiography, Fresh Off The Boat was the first network television sitcom in the United States to feature an Asian American family as main characters for more than 20 years; she is pictured right with co-stars Hudson Yang, Randall Park, Lucille Soong, Ian Chen and Forrest Wheeler
Wu, whose real parents emigrated from Taiwan, later revealed to The Times that the producer’s inappropriate behavior escalated when they attended a sporting event and allegedly “placed his hand on her thigh, his hand ending by touching his crotch”.
The actress confronted the man and asked him to stop, and eventually they both tried to move on from the incident.
During her conversation with The New York Times, Wu revealed that she decided not to speak about her controlling behaviors at the time due to fear of consequences, but over time and the success of the show, she began to feel more empowered and comfortable. about his status on the show.
By the time Wu and the man were arguing about attending a film festival together, they weren’t talking to each other.
Allegations: The actress alleges that the lead producer exhibited controlling behaviors during the show’s first two seasons, which eventually escalated into an incident where “he placed his hand on her thigh” and his hand “eventually touched his crotch.”
“I kept my mouth shut for a very long time about a lot of sexual harassment and bullying that I experienced during the first two seasons of the show,” the Virginia native told a panel. at the Atlantic Festival last Friday.
She explained, “Because after the first two seasons, once it was successful, once I wasn’t afraid of losing my job, that’s when I could start to say “no” to harassment, “no” to bullying, from this particular producer.
In the end, she decided not to go public and identified the man to avoid’tarnishing the show’s reputation.
Fresh Off The Boat would air for six seasons, ending in February 2020 after earning the accolade of being the first series featuring an all-Asian American main cast to air over 100 episodes.
Along with Wu, the series starred Randall Park, Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler, Ian Chen, Lucille Soong, Chelsey Crisp, and Ray Wise, among others.
So far, representatives for Fresh Off the Boat and 20th Television have not publicly responded to any of these accusations.
Wu initially kept quiet about the accusations of sexual harassment and bullying for fear of the consequences, such as losing his job on the show; finally, she decided not to identify the man to avoid “tarnishing the reputation of the show”; she is pictured with co-star Randall Park
