Constance Wu revisited her social media dust-up in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times. The Fresh Off The Boat star said that she has moved beyond the self-described "fiasco" and learned a bit about the power she wields on platforms like Twitter.
For the uninitiated, Wu caused a social media storm when she responded negatively to the news that Fresh Off The Boat had been renewed. The actress was upset that another season of the series would interfere with a planned play that Wu had lined up. Any negativity toward a show as beloved as FOTB was bound to raise hackles, and fans voiced their displeasure until Wu apologized.
Wu explained her side of the story in an interview ahead of her new movie Hustlers.
"I had this moment of heat where I got upset because I had to give up a job I had been looking forward to and had been chasing for a while,” she said. “It was moving to me how many people from the show reached out to me, and even on set ... to say, ‘Just so you know, we love you and we know who you are, and you didn’t deserve any of that stuff.’ Because they also know that I’m an actress — I can be dramatic.”
Wu said that the moment served as a wake-up call about "what it means to be a public figure."
“I’m not beating myself up for it, because I know me,” said Wu. “But I don’t think I realized that people were paying so much attention to my Twitter.”
Wu also added that the strength of feelings about Fresh Off The Boat were an indictment of a system that provides so few representations of the Asian-American experience.
“I am grateful for my entire career,” she said. “But the fact that my career has been historic shouldn’t necessarily be a call [to say to] me, ‘You should be so lucky’ — it should be a call to pay attention to the fact that this kind of thing shouldn’t have been historic. Me getting to play a fully human experience as an Asian American, that shouldn’t be historic.”
