I am just so fascinated with people, and social media, and what strikes a nerve and what doesn’t.
Constance Wu came back to social media today, telling us about the past three years of her life, and her new book coming out.
She had some huge internet backlash those few years ago when she complained that her TV show was renewed, when it meant she was going to miss out on a movie she wanted to do. People were saying she should be grateful for steady work, and that her show being renewed meant probably over 100 people got to keep their jobs, and she should be grateful for that as well.
To some extent, that’s probably true. But there seemed to be no room at the time for her to express her disappointment in playing the same mom character for so many years, when she had so many other things she wanted to do. And sure, maybe it wasn’t appropriate to express it publicly, but she was bullied off the internet for three years, and as she said in her comeback announcement today, the backlash was so severe, the shame got so out of control, she literally tried to kill herself.
And it’s interesting because I remember at the time feeling like people were kind of overreacting to some pretty tame tweets from someone who was merely disappointed she was missing an opportunity for one she’d outgrown.
And now, practically all the responses today were defending her. Many talked about how Ellen Pompeo has been loudly talking about wanting to end Grey’s Anatomy for years, even though it also is steady work where she gets paid an extraordinarily hefty salary, and lots of people are employed on the show. But no one hates on her for it. And people were wondering if in large part that’s because Ellen Pompeo is white and Constance Wu, and many other POC performers are expected to just be ‘grateful for what they have’.
And I think there may be something to the idea of some underlying racism for her. I’m glad the tide has changed. I don’t know if it’s just time, or if it’s that so many absolutely wild things have changed in the last three years that just nobody cares about such a tame scandal anymore or what. But it’s just so interesting to see this redemption arc happening in real time.
Sometimes, I think it’s slightly hard to tell who truly ‘deserves’ a big public redemption and renaissance of their work. [That’s a whole huge thing I almost typed out here, but I’ll save it for another time.] But I think Constance Wu absolutely definitely didn’t deserve all the vitriol in the first place, so in my opinion she owes us nothing, and we probably owe her some of that time she can’t get back. So, I hope to read her new book!