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Constance Wu talked about the pain of being rejected by the Asian community after the controversy surrounding her tweets in 2019.
Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk, Wu explained that she felt rejected by her community after posting her tweets about Fresh Off the Boat’s renewal (she was disappointed by this) – mentioning one specific gala event, which happened months following her suicide attempt.
At the Unforgettable Gala, an annual Character Media event, presenter Simu Liu told a joke about her after being comforted that she wouldn’t be mocked.
“They wanted me to come ‘cause they wanted to celebrate [Fresh Off the Boat] and the kids on the show,” Wu said in the interview with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“At the time, there was so much controversy around me that I was like, if I go, people are just gonna want to talk about the tweets. And like, I love my kids on the show so much. I want this to be a moment for them to celebrate.”
Wu said, “I told them, ‘I don’t want anybody to make fun of it ‘cause I’m still in a very raw place about it. I’m not ready to be mocked for it.”
At the time, she said, no one, including her colleagues, was aware of her suicide attempt.
“But I expressed that I can’t deal with that. They promised me. They said, ‘No, no, no, no. We love Constance. It’ll only be warm energy and positive vibes towards her.’ So, I was like, ‘Okay, okay, I’ll go.
“And they sat me, like, in the front row and, like, had all these cameras on me, and within ten minutes, the host of the show made a crack at me.”
She shared more details about her experiences appearing for Fresh Off the Boat at the time.
“I was sitting there alone, trying not to cry in a public setting, and the whole audience was like, ‘Oh, s—!” Wu stated.
“They had promised they wouldn’t mock me, and they did it right off the bat. It almost felt like they were setting me up for it. And it truly felt like a betrayal from the Asian American Community. A couple of months prior to that, I was in the emergency room.”
Read also: Constance Wu Shares Sexual Harassment Experience in an Interview
Fresh Off the Boat Harassment
It was not clear what the joke meant, but Wu said Liu had extended his apologies to her.
“The host of that, Simu, he did the right thing, and he apologized, and it was a sincere apology,” she stated.
Although the Shang-Chi actor has sincerely expressed his apologies, Wu said she still feels ostracized by the rest of the community.
“I feel like they are avoiding me,” she said. “I feel the disapproval, but rather than being blatant, the silence of how much people reached out to me before, pre-tweet versus post-tweet. And you can tell. The silence has an effect.”
On Wednesday evening, Wu took the Instagram story to clarify that she had mistaken the gala she cited Liu hosting on Red Table Talk.
“It was the Unforgettable Gala that was hosted by Character Media, not CAPE (Coalition Asian Pacifics in Entertainment). I apologize to @capeusa & regret the error,” she said.
Liu did host the 18th Annual Unforgettable Gala, which honors Asian and Pacific Islanders who made their voice heard for API representation in entertainment and culture, in 2019.
In the interview with the mother-daughter duos, Wu also mentioned the sexual harassment she went through on set of Fresh Off the Boat from a senior producer, her encounters with sexual assault outside of set, and her relationship with her mother – all of which are discussed in her memoir, Making a Scene, which is available now.
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Photo: Best W News
