Hollywood actress Constance Wu returned to Twitter on Thursday after almost three years and revealed that she had attempted to kill herself following a backlash on Twitter against a tweet she wrote about the renewal of her series Fresh Off the Boat. The Crazy Rich Asians star also announced the book, Making a Scene, which she wrote during this period.
In 2019, a section of social media users resorted to “internet shaming” after the 40-year-old actress expressed her frustration over her ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat being renewed.
The South Asian actress took to Twitter and opened up about her struggles that came after the backlash. “I was afraid of coming back on social media because I almost lost my life from it: 3 years ago, when I made careless tweets about the renewal of my TV show, it ignited outrage and internet shaming that got pretty severe,” read her statement on Twitter.
Wu found herself in the crosshairs of Twitteratis after one of her tweets about the renewal of Fresh Off the Boat did not land well with her fans.
“So upset right now that I’m literally crying. Ugh. F**k,” she wrote on the microblogging site in 2019. When a user called it “great news”, Wu replied, “No it’s not.”
Wu later clarified that her comments were posted during a “rough day” and that her disappointment was over having to pull out of a project she was passionate about. She added in a statement that her role on Fresh Off the Boat had become “easy and pleasant” and she was looking for new challenges.
“I felt awful about what I’d said and when a few DMs from 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, and they’d be better off without me. Looking back, it’s surreal that a few DMs convinced me to end my own life, but that’s what happened. Luckily, a friend found me and rushed me to the ER,” Wu wrote in her statement on Twitter on Thursday.
“It was a scary moment that made me reassess a lot in my life. For the next few years, I put my career aside to focus on my mental health,” the Hustlers actress said.
Wu recently starred with Chris Pratt in the Amazon action series The Terminal List after a few small voice roles. She will next be seen on the big screen in the kids’ adventure Lyle Lyle Crocodile.
She wrote, “AsAms don’t talk about mental health enough. While we’re quick to celebrate representation wins, there’s a lot of avoidance around the more uncomfortable issues within our community. Even my tweets became a subject so touchy that most of my AsAm colleagues decided that was the time to avoid me or ice me out. I’ll admit it hurt a lot, but it also made me realize how important it is to reach out and care for people who are going through a hard time.”
“A little break from Hollywood and a lot of therapy,”and she felt “OK enough” to venture back onto social media. “And even though I’m scared, I’ve decided that I owe it to me-of-3-years-ago to be brave and share my story so that it might help someone with theirs,” she wrote.
