Constance Wu on her Fresh Off the Boat Twitter meltdown: "I’m an actress — I can be dramatic"

Los Angeles Times

It turns out Wu -- who is under contract to star on Fresh Off the Boat for another two years -- was upset in May over ABC's Season 6 renewal because it meant she wouldn't be able to do a play. “I had this moment of heat where I got upset because I had to give up a job I had been looking forward to and had been chasing for a while,” she tells the Los Angeles Times of her self-described "Twitter fiasco." She admits that, as an actress, she could be dramatic. “I mean, that’s our toolkit, right? I’m dramatic," she says. I’m emotional. But they also know that that doesn’t represent me because they have a hundred episodes of behavior that proves otherwise.” Wu says she also learned that her Twitter platform afforded greater reach than she realized. “I’m not beating myself up for it, because I know me,” she says. “But I don’t think I realized that people were paying so much attention to my Twitter.” Wu now worries that she'll be blamed if Fresh Off the Boat isn't renewed for Season 7, and she regrets how her tweets affected her cast mates, colleagues and ABC Entertainment president Karey Burke. “I like that people are expressing their feelings about it, because it improved my awareness of what it means to be a ... public figure,” she says, adding: “I’ve had a back and forth about it. It’s the line between being a role model, but also authenticity." Wu gets that she has a particular role, especially as Asian-American pioneer. "There is an expectation of the way that I ought to behave, and not just of perfection but of graciousness. And I am grateful. But am I elegant?” she said with a laugh. “No. I think I can be verbally eloquent sometimes, but as a human, am I an elegant person? No.”