admin Constance Wu has talked about how she found the care she needed after a suicide attempt in two interviews this week, on Good Morning America and Red Table Talk. The Crazy Rich Asians actor also spoke about returning to social media after a three-year break, experiencing sexual harassment on the set of Fresh Off the Boat, and mental health awareness within the Asian American community.
Wu, 40, said her mental health started spiraling after she tweeted disappointment that Fresh Off the Boat had been renewed for another season in 2019. At the time, Wu clarified that she wasn’t upset that the show would continue filming; instead, her disappointment stemmed from the fact that by working on another season of the show, she would have to give up a different project she was excited about. Even still, the online backlash was intense.
“There was a huge pile on, and I was essentially canceled for coming off as ungrateful,” Wu told GMA. “And the most painful thing of all was it was really the Asian American community that either ostracized or avoided me the most.” The judgment went beyond her tweets, Wu said, explaining that people called her a “diva” for not wanting to do the show following the 2018 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians: “I was canceled for not being the Asian people wanted me to be, ungrateful, bratty, whatever,” she said.
Wu told Red Table Talk that she tried to kill herself after reading DMs sent to her by another Asian American actor who criticized her tweets. Fortunately, a friend who was checking in on her at the time saved her life by taking her straight to a psychiatric emergency room. “They checked me in, and I slept the night on a cot in the waiting room in the psychiatric ER in New York City under observation. And then there were two counselors the next morning who talked to me,” Wu said. “Then I had to be in therapy with a psychiatrist and a psychologist every day for a while.” Wu told GMA that she also started a medication that helped, though it took some time to determine what worked for her.
When asked what the healing process was like, Wu said, “I needed it. I was unsafe at that point. I was in a mental place of just beating myself up.” She added the toll that being “canceled” took caused her a lot of pain: “So much shame…and feeling like I’d ruined everything for everyone.”
Wu also said she had stayed silent about being sexually harassed while filming Fresh Off the Boat because she wanted to protect a show that was important to her community: “My abuser on the show was an Asian American man, a producer, and it was really a conflict for me because I didn’t want to stain the reputation of the one show Asian Americans had to represent themselves.” She said the response she got after tweeting her frustration about the show’s renewal is among the reasons she doesn’t want to out her abuser now: “Am I afraid of backlash? Of course.”
After staying off social media for nearly three years, Wu came back to Twitter in July to announce a new essay collection, called Making a Scene, which was published this week. In the statement, Wu explained why she’d stayed offline and why she’d put her career on hold, and called for a larger conversation about mental health within the Asian American community. “It was a scary moment that made me reassess a lot in my life,” she wrote. “AsAms don’t talk about mental health enough. While we’re quick to celebrate wins, there’s a lot of avoidance around the more uncomfortable issues within our community. Even my tweets became a subject so touchy that most of my AsAm colleagues decided that was the time to avoid me or ice me out.”
But Wu said she learned a lot from the experience, even though it was one of the most challenging times in her life. “I’ll admit it hurt a lot, but it also made me realize how important it is to reach out and care for people who are going through a hard time,” her Twitter statement said. “That’s why I wrote my book, and why I’m here today—to reach out and help people talk about the uncomfortable stuff in order to understand it, to reckon with it, and open pathways to healing.”
