Riding high after the success of Crazy Rich Asians, Constance Wu came crashing back down to earth following social media backlash over her negative comments about the renewal of Fresh Off the Boat.
She opened up about what she learned from the incident in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“I had this moment of heat where I got upset because I had to give up a job I had been looking forward to and had been chasing for a while,” she said to the Times.
Wu revealed for the first time that the role she had to give up because of her commitments to Fresh Off the Boat was a “not Asian-specific” part in a play, not in a movie as many had wrongly assumed.
Even though her social media following has grown to 1 million, she admits she didn’t realize the enormous power and responsibility that comes with that.
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“I’m not beating myself up for it, because I know me,” said Wu. “But I don’t think I realized that people were paying so much attention to my Twitter.”
The self described “fiasco” propped up story lines that Wu acts like a diva on the set. She says her fellow actors have come to her support.
“It was moving to me how many people from the show reached out to me, and even on set … to say, ‘Just so you know, we love you and we know who you are, and you didn’t deserve any of that stuff.’ Because they also know that I’m an actress — I can be dramatic.
Wu will co-star with Jennifer Lopez this September in Hustlers.
“I know some people were like, ‘Constance demanded top billing.’ No, the script had me as the lead. But it’s a juicier story to say the other stuff.
“I am grateful for my entire career,” she said. “But the fact that my career has been historic shouldn’t necessarily be a call [to say to] me, ‘You should be so lucky’ — it should be a call to pay attention to the fact that this kind of thing shouldn’t have been historic. Me getting to play a fully human experience as an Asian American, that shouldn’t be historic. But it is. Let’s talk about the system, not whether or not I deserve to be in it and how I need to feel about it.”
Wu says she’s learned and predicted there will be no further social media “blow ups” from her.
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