Constance Wu was “afraid” of losing her job if she spoke out regarding the sexual harassment she allegedly suffered on the set of “Fresh Off the Boat”.
The 40-year-old actress recently said she was stalked by a producer on the sitcom, but felt her ordeal was ‘pretty common’ and not ‘that bad’ compared to other situations she’s been in confronted.
Speaking on ‘Good Morning America’, she said: ‘I was afraid of losing my job, and compared to other stories of harassment I’ve experienced, it was ‘not that bad’ . Actually, to be honest, what I experienced was pretty common.”
The ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ star ‘bottomed up’ her pain because her alleged attacker was an Asian American and ‘such a good advocate for Asian American issues’ that she didn’t ‘want to do it to fall.”
She added, “It was really a conflict for me, because I didn’t want to tarnish the reputation of the only show that Asian Americans might relate to.”
But as early as the second season of the ABC show, the actress “infuriated” him when she started refusing his “inappropriate requests” and hasn’t spoken to him since.
In 2019, Constance sparked an uproar when she tweeted how “upset” she was that “Fresh Off the Boat” had been renewed for a fifth season and she admitted the alleged harassment was one of the reasons for which she was ready to leave the series.
She said: “I had gotten other jobs that I was really excited regarding and was ready to wipe the slate clean.
“I was ready to quit working in a place that held so many memories of sexual harassment, shame and fear. So when I found out I mightn’t move on, I felt – honestly, at that time, I felt betrayed and I was lied to.”
While the actress acknowledged her tweet was “reckless”, “graceless” and “dramatic”, she doesn’t think the backlash she received was fair.
She said: “The backlash was immediate. There was a huge pile-up. I was basically canceled because I was seen as ungrateful, and the most painful thing is that it’s really the community Asian American who ostracized or avoided me the most.
“Do I think the amount of hate I received was equal to the amount of mistakes I made? No.”
Constance felt suicidal following receiving DMs from another Asian actress who “humiliated” her to the point of thinking she needed “to end her own life”.
She added: “She basically said that I had become a plague to [la] Asian American community, and that nothing I might ever do would ever compensate for the damage I had done to the community. That I was like a shame. And it made me feel like Asian Americans thought it would be better if I didn’t exist.”
