Crazy Rich Asians’ Constance Wu on the Pressure of Representation and Being “the Worst Asian Ever

I realized ‘Oh, there’s a different way to think about things, in terms of how structures are created.’ I think that’s the first step to becoming woke: understanding that you’re programmed. That you grow up in a system

I’m waiting to meet Constance Wu outside Blue Bottle Coffee in L.A.’s Echo Park, when I realize I’m not 100 per cent certain I’ll recognize her out of character. I’d seen Wu’s show-stealing breakout work on Fresh Off the Boat, where she plays the mother of food personality Eddie Huang (or some prepubescent version of him) with more nuance than most sitcom moms could imagine, but she likely wasn’t going to turn up looking like Jessica Huang in a loose floral-print dress from the early ’90s.

Not to mention, seeing famous people in real life is a little like hearing your cellphone ringing in the other room—you’re pretty sure it’s your ringtone, but it’s so faint that it could easily be a police siren down the block or your brain messing with you. But then she walks past me and into the café. I know it’s her because (1) I do recognize her, thank you very much, and (2) I get a text from her, letting me know she has arrived

I was right. Wu definitely doesn’t look like she does on Fresh Off the Boat or, for that matter, like her character Rachel Chu from Crazy Rich Asians—the unfortunately groundbreaking late-summer blockbuster based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan. Her hair is blond now, though it seems like a stop in a long journey that will inevitably return to black. (It was pink for a while, too.) She’s wearing large reflective sunglasses and a New York Giants ball cap that she adjusts periodically during our interview as a kind of punctuation. The sunnies and cap (the universal uniform of the incognito celebrity) also work perfectly for the neighbourhood—hip but well heeled, approachable despite some rough edges.

I say that Crazy Rich Asians is unfortunately groundbreaking, but actually Fresh Off the Boatis, too. Technically, the ground upon which these projects were built, so to speak, has been broken, but it was broken so long ago that it hardly counts. There hasn’t been a Hollywood feature consisting almost entirely of Asians since The Joy Luck Club in 1993, and the last sitcom entirely centred around an Asian family was All-American Girl with Margaret Cho nearly 25 years ago. It’s not unfortunate that these projects got made, but it’s pretty shameful that they are the only ones.

“I have a pretty good capacity to talk about it in such a way that it’s as clear and insightful as it can be in the moment. I actually think it’s kind of a privilege and an honour—and an obligation.”

Naturally, this is something that Wu is keenly aware of. If you follow her on social media or watch her in interviews or read what she has written in magazines—or what has been written about her (including Lena Dunham’s gushing write-up about her in last year’s 100 Most Influential People issue of Time)—you are no doubt also aware of the startling lack of Asian representation in Hollywood. She isn’t shy about fighting for it, even if her activism has become one of the first things everyone asks her about. “I have a pretty good capacity to talk about it in such a way that it’s as clear and insightful as it can be in the moment,” she says. “I actually think it’s kind of a privilege and an honour—and an obligation.”

But, growing up in Richmond, Va., Wu wasn’t always as conscious. “I don’t think I was ignorant; I just didn’t have cousins or uncles or aunts around me—or anything like that either,” she says. “My parents’ friends were people from the university where my dad taught, and they were all white. I just didn’t notice it.”

And because Richmonders are unfailingly polite, the first time she even thought about her ethnicity, she tells me, was after she had moved to New York. She was picking up bit parts in theatre and indie films and became friends with a girl who seemed to be at all the same auditions as she was. “She was also Asian-American,” recounts Wu. “We went to this party, and after walking in, she said to me, ‘We’re the only Asian people here.’ I hadn’t even realized it. She had grown up in New York, with family around her, so she was used to being in spaces where there were other Asians. I was very used to being in spaces where it was all white people.”

You know, like Hollywood.

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