Constance Wu Says She Was Sexually Harassed by ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ Senior Producer: ‘I Kept My Mouth Shut for a Really Long Time’
Constance Wu has come forward with allegations that she was sexually harassed by a senior member of the “Fresh Off the Boat” production team.
According to the New York Times, Wu opens up about the experience in her upcoming memoir, “Making a Scene.” Though she only mentions the producer by an initial, Wu alleges that during the show’s first season in 2015, the man exhibited controlling behaviors and harassed her.
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“‘Fresh Off the Boat’ was my first-ever TV show,” Wu told the Times. “I was thrown into this world. I don’t have parents in the industry. And because I was 30, people thought I knew what I was doing. It made me paranoid and embarrassed.”
According to a galley copy of the book sent to Variety, Wu alleges the producer told her to send him selfies and to run all her business decisions by him before making them. She also alleges the producer coerced her to attending a Lakers game with her, during which he touched her thigh and grazed her crotch, and then became cold to her after she told him to stop. Wu writes that she and the producer stopped talking after a blow-up argument over Wu’s decision to not attend an Asian American film festival to give her time to recuperate from the non-stop schedule on the show. However, she writes she eventually forgave him so that she could move on.
Wu said she decided not to speak up at the time due to fear of consequences, saying during a panel at the Atlantic Festival on Friday: “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. Because, after the first two seasons, once it was a success, 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. And, so 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.’”
Representatives for “Fresh Off the Boat” and 20th Television did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Adam B. Vary contributed to this report.
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