Constance Wu tearfully recalls moment she considered suicide after Twitter backlash
In 2019, actor sparked online firestorm over ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ tweets
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Your support makes all the difference.Constance Wu has opened up about the emotional stress she was under after tweets she posted in 2019 sparked major backlash.
Following the renewal of her ABC sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat, for its fifth and final season in 2019, the 40-year-old actor posted her dismay at the news, which fans and fellow actors took as a sign of ungratefulness.
In a later tweet, Wu apologised, saying: “I love FOTB. I was temporarily upset yesterday not because I hate the show, but because its renewal meant I had to give up on another project that I was really passionate about.”
After returning to social media in July after a three-year hiatus, the Crazy Rich Asians star revealed: “A fellow Asian actress told me I’d become a blight on the Asian American community.”
“I started feeling like I didn’t even deserve to live anymore. That I was a disgrace to AsAms [Asian Americans], and they’d be better off without me,” she added.
Now, speaking on a recent Good Morning America appearance while promoting her debut memoir, Making a Scene, Wu tearfully recalled the devastating effect that the social media onslaught had on her.
“I pulled myself over the balcony of my apartment building, and I was going to jump,” she recounted. “Talking about it now makes my palms itch because I remember holding onto it.”
Wu reflected: “Ultimately, it ended up being something helpful because it made me get help.
“I was in therapy every day for a while, and it took me a long time to get on medication,” she added. “I was cancelled for not being the Asian that people wanted me to be: Ungrateful, bratty, whatever.
“Do I think that the proportion of the hatred and cancellation pitted at me was equal to the amount of error I did? No. But whatever, I’m thinking about how I can be a better person,” she said.
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Making a Scene is out now.
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