In a heartbreaking interview on “Red Table Talk,” actor Constance Wu discussed her suicide attempt and explained what had caused it.
Wu went into depth about her experiences playing the matriarch on ABC’s “Fresh off the Boat,” including claims of sexual assault by a producer, hostility online for talking about the show’s renewal, and a suicide attempt in 2019.
The criticism Wu experienced after tweeting her disgust at the show’s renewal for a sixth season was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she claimed, alluding to remarks made by a different Asian American actress who described the actress as “a scourge on the Asian American community.”
I saw these DMs from an Asian actress who ought to have been my buddy. I thought that dying would be the only way to show her that I felt as horrible as she believed I deserved to feel, and I felt that nothing I could ever do would be adequate.
Wu described in her most recent book, “Making a Scene,” how she read those DMs and then, armed with a blanket and the intention of jumping, scaled the edge of her fifth-floor apartment building in New York City. She claimed that a friend who had stopped by to see how she was got her over the ledge and drove her to a mental health emergency hospital.
Following the event, she claimed she started going to daily appointments with a psychologist and a psychiatrist. “I required it.” At that time, I was in danger.
Online commenters criticized her for being a diva and selfish for not taking into account the work of everyone on the program, she revealed to the Smiths.
During her first few years on “Fresh off the Boat,” she said that she experienced frequent sexual assaults, bullying, and threats.
Wu said that she felt unable to speak out against the harassment.
The most difficult part, she claimed, was that despite his sexist and harassing behavior toward her, she chose not to report it since the program served as a symbol of representation for Asian Americans and she didn’t want to tarnish its reputation.
The absence of Asian American representation makes it more difficult, according to Nadia Kim, a professor of sociology and Asian and Asian American studies at Loyola Marymount University.
There is a lot of pressure placed on performers like Constance Wu to be flawless since there aren’t many Asian American celebrities, according to her.
