Constance Wu can’t help but cry while talking about accusations of sexual harassment, which she made against an unidentified Fresh Off the Boat producer in her latest memoir Making a Scene.
The actress, known for her role in Crazy Rich Asians, shared that, at first, she “didn’t want to write” about what she had to go through while shooting the first two seasons of the ABC show during her appearance on Monday’s episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers.
“That was the last essay I wrote for the book, and only after being, like, pushed by my editor, like, ‘You should write about this. This is what people want to hear,’” she shared to host Seth Meyers. “And I was like, ‘I’m done with that chapter of my life.”
In the essay, Wu claims that the showrunner, who she names M—-, would always interfere with her business matters, monitor her and her friends, said inappropriate jokes and statements about her appearance, and once physically harass her at a basketball game.
Wu shared that, as a beginner in the industry at the time, she was scared of what might happen after she spoke out.
“I had never done anything big before. I had just graduated from being a waitress. I was scared of being fired,” she stated.
“Once I, sort of, felt a little bit of job security, then I started saying no to this producer, which infuriated him. But it was okay, so I thought, ‘You know what? I handled it. I don’t need to stain the reputation of this show or of this producer. I can just keep it inside.”
Subsequently, Wu recounted that she was “never really able to be myself on set,” further stating, “I’d see my abuser being buddy-buddy with everyone else, knowing what he had done to me.”
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Wu Didn’t Vent Out
However, not venting it out never really helped, too – as a matter of fact, Wu stated that her buried hurt is part of what pushed her strong reaction to the show’s sixth season renewal, which she took to Twitter to express.
“So upset right now that I’m literally crying,” Wu wrote on Twitter at the time. “Ugh.”
“The thing I learned is that bad feelings and abuse don’t just go away because you will it to. It’s gonna come out somewhere,” Wu said as her tears poured.
“I think people didn’t understand the context of those tweets. And thank you for not making fun of it, because it led me to a really dark time.”
In July, Wu shared that the harsh criticisms she was thrown online made her want to take her own life.
“I decided to include it in the book because I think it’s important that we engage in curiosity and empathy before we go straight to judgment,” she revealed. “Because if somebody does something that is out of character for them, it usually means something is going on in their life.”
In an interview, Wu revealed to Good Morning America that she is “of course” scared of the criticisms ahead after sharing her experience in her novel, stressing that there’s “not much to be gained when survivors tell their stories.”
Additionally, Wu noted that the harassment happened “before the #MeToo movement.”
“I was just like, ‘Nobody’s going to believe men,’” she stated on Late Night. “I didn’t know what to do.”
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