Constance Wu shares devastating details about her past trauma

'Maybe it wasn’t violent, but it was rape.'
September 28, 2022 11:38 a.m. EST
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Warning: the following discusses sexual assault and trama which may be triggering to some readers.

Crazy Rich Asians star Constance Wu is finding her voice and sharing her story in a brave new memoir that includes some devastating details of sexual assault and harassment she endured at the beginning of her career in Hollywood.

In her book Making A Scene, which is set to hit the shelves on October 4th, the Hustlers star reveals how she was raped when she was an up-and-coming actress, but how she couldn’t process the event until years later when she realized exactly what had been done to her.

In excerpts of her book published in Vanity Fair, Constance identified the assailant as Ty, an author whom she dated, and twice when he assaulted her.

"I felt a twinge of warning in my gut, but I ignored it — he didn't look threatening or shady in any way, and if you had been there, you would have agreed," she wrote. Although she writes she consented to kissing, she makes it clear she did not consent to sex. Ty, she writes, continued anyway and she says she was too frightened to fight back. 

"Some people might say that I should have fought back against Ty," she writes. "But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't change how I reacted that night. Because when I think about the girl I was back then, I understand what she was going through."

She writes that years went by and she didn’t have an understanding of that event or fully comprehended the indignity against her all the way until 2018. "I'd just woken up from a nap when the realization hit me like a flood," she wrote. "Ty raped me ... and I hadn't done anything about it."

This heartbreaking news comes on the heels of Constance revealing earlier this week that she was sexually harassed and intimidated by one of the producers of her hit show, Fresh Off the Boat.

"My publisher really encouraged me to write [about] it ... I was like, 'No I'm done with that chapter in my life.’ I eventually realized it was important to talk about," she said on stage at the Atlantic Festival. "I did have a pretty traumatic experience my first couple years on that show, and nobody knew about it because that show was historic for Asian Americans." 

She continued, "It was the only show on network television in over 20 years to star Asian Americans, and I did not want to sully the reputation of the one show we had representing us.”

"I kept my mouth shut for a really long time about a lot of sexual harassment and intimidation that I received the first two seasons of the show."

Deadline reports that she added, "Once I was no longer scared of losing my job, that's when I was able to start saying 'no' to the harassment, 'no' to the intimidation, from this particular producer. I thought: 'You know what? I handled it, nobody has to know, I don't have to stain this Asian American producer's reputation. I don't have to stain the reputation of the show.'"

With these things, Constance notes, there’s always a caveat, unfortunately. "The thing is bad feelings don't go away just because you will them to. They are inevitably going to come out somewhere."

Making a Scene is out Oct. 4, and Constance said in a statement that the memoir, “is a tribute to the people and events that have shaped my humanity and determined the direction of my life."


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