ACTRESS Constance Wu has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment by a senior member of the ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ production team.
Wu opens up about this experience in her upcoming memoir, ‘Making a Scene’, as reported by the New York Times.
Wu alleges that during the show’s first season in 2015, the producer, whom she only mentions by an initial, harassed her and showed controlling behaviour.
“‘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,” she added.
Wu claims that the producer instructed her to send him selfies and consult him about business decisions before making them, according to a gallery copy of the memoir sent to Variety.
The producer also allegedly coerced her into attending a Lakers game with him, where he touched her thigh and grazed her crotch, and then became cold to her after she told him to stop.
Wu writes that both she and the producer cut communications after an explosive argument over her decision to not attend an Asian American film festival to recuperate from the show’s incessant schedule.
However, she eventually forgave him so that she could move on.
During a panel at the Atlantic Festival on Friday, Wu said she decided not to speak up at that time due to fear of consequences.
“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 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,” she said.
“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,” she added.
Representatives of ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ and 20th Television did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment. – The Vibes, September 24, 2022
