Why Constance Wu didn’t come forward about Fresh Off The Boat harassment — until now - The A.V. Club

During an appearance on Red Table Talk, the actor explains, “This producer, he was an Asian American, and the thing that was most painful was he was so derogatory and harassing towards me, but because this show was sort of a beacon of representation for Asian Americans, and I sort of became a symbol of representation, I didn’t want to sully the one show with sexual harassment claims against the one Asian American man who is doing all this better work for the community.”.

Wu also harbored guilt for “playing into it” when the producer made derogatory comments about other women: “I’ve got to pretend I’m part of the boys’ club,” she remembers thinking.

When she did disclose his behavior to others, she wasn’t met with much support: “I spoke up to a couple of people who I thought were friends or allies and nobody encouraged me to go to HR though because they didn’t want the show to get canceled.” (The producer also seemed to only target harassment towards Asian American women, complicating the matter further.) Much later, a female colleague did encourage her to report to HR, but by then Wu thought “nobody is going to believe me, I don’t have evidence.”.

Ultimately, she decided to disclose the harassment in her book to put those controversial tweets—the backlash to which sparked a suicide attempt—into context