When We Eat Our Own
Constance Wu & the impossible expectations of representation
Constance Wu was all over the media this past week on a redemption tour of sorts as she promotes her new book, a memoir in essays called Making a Scene. Like many Asian Americans, I’ve had ambivalent, sometimes even negative, feelings about her. I heard the rumors — that she was high-strung, a perfectionist. That she was strangely reclusive and regularly declined to hang out with her co-stars in order to memorize her lines. That the other actors from Fresh Off the Boat and Crazy Rich Asians didn’t like her. That she was a diva.
How anyone in my social circle could actually be privy to this information is still a mystery, but someone put out the word, it got around and had a consistent theme to it. Constance Wu was not the Asian American movie star we wanted her to be.
So when The Tweet happened in 2019 — an expression of frustration and anger seemingly in response to FOTB being surprise renewed for a sixth season — the internet temporarily broke. A lapse in judgment, ten words posted in a very public forum, served as proof that everyone’s suspicions about Constance Wu were woefully correct.
A blitz of social media shaming followed and the Twitter trolls came out hard.
