Constance Wu opened up about her time on “Fresh Off the Boat” this week, giving some new insight into the sexual harassment she experienced from a producer on the show in its first few years.
In her new book, “Making a Scene,” Wu explains that, during the early days of the ABC sitcom, she was being regularly harassed by a senior producer and that situation was part of why she tweeted out her displeasure over the show’s renewal, which subsequently led to harsh backlash. Appearing on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Monday, Wu was asked if she felt that contextualizing the tweets was necessary.
But, according to the actress, she really didn’t want to write about this particular time in her book. She was pushed to do so by her editors.
“I was like ‘I’m done with that chapter in my life,’” Wu explained. “Because all of the sexual harassment, the inappropriate touching, the like, telling me to wear short skirts and like, intimidation, that all only happened in the first two years of the show, when I was still very scared that I — you know, I’d never done anything big before. I’d just graduated from being a waitress. And I was scared of being fired.”
Wu noted that once she started feeling “a little bit of job security,” she began pushing back against that producer and saying no, “which infuriated him.”
“But it was OK, so I thought ‘You know what? I handled it,’” she continued. “‘I don’t need to stain the reputation of this show, or of this producer, I could just keep it inside.’ And, as a result, I feel like I was never able to really be myself on set, ’cause I’d see my abuser being buddy-buddy with everybody else, knowing what he had done to me.”
Wu went on to explain that she realized she had to speak out about what happened, because she couldn’t just “will” the trauma away, and eventually broke down in tears with Meyers.
You can watch the full interview in the video above.