During an interview at The Atlantic Festival last week in Washington D.C., actress Constance Wu shared a personal experience about her time on the groundbreaking ABC sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wu alleged she faced years of alleged sexual harassment and alleged intimidation by one of the series producers. She stated that she didn’t want to reveal what was happening at the time. View a snippet of the interview below.
“I kept my mouth shut for a really long time about a lot of sexual harassment and intimidation that I received the first two seasons of the show,” Wu explained at the event via The Hollywood Reporter. “Because, after the first two seasons, once it was a success, once I was no longer scared of losing my job, that’s when I was able to start saying ‘no’ to the harassment, ‘no’ to the intimidation, from this particular producer. And, so I thought: ‘You know what? I handled it. Nobody has to know. I don’t have to stain this Asian American producer’s reputation. I don’t have to stain the reputation of the show.’”
Wu explained how this specific experience on the show was related to the bit of controversy regarding her tweets about the sitcom getting renewed for sixth season in 2019.
“I wanted to have a fresh slate where I didn’t have to start a show with all these memories of abuse.,” Wu stated via The Hollywood Reporter. “A few people knew [the harrasment] was happening, and to go to work every day and see those people who knew that he was sexually harassing me being ‘buddy-buddy’ with him felt like a betrayal every time. I loved everybody on that crew, and I loved working on that show, but it had that history of abuse, that it started with, and even though I handled it after two years, I was looking forward to a clean slate.”
The interview from the Crazy Rich Asians actress comes weeks before the release of her memoir, Making a Scene, which arrives October 4. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wu was hesitant about divulging the alleged abuse in her book, but with encouragement from her publisher, Simon & Schuester, she “realized it was important to talk about.”
“That show was historic for Asian Americans,” Wu said via The Hollywood Reporter. “It was the only show on network television in over 20 years to star Asian Americans and I did not want to sully the reputation of the one show we had representing us.”
Wu recently co-starred with Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation, Jurassic World: Dominion) in the war drama series, The Terminal List, on Amazon Prime. All six seasons of Fresh Off the Boat are available to stream on Hulu.