“It’s not a Chinese arc, it’s not an Asian arc; it is an Asian-American arc, and I’ll probably get shit for saying this, but in terms of the Hollywood or media perception of nonwhite cultures, one thing I have noticed is they’re more comfortable hiring the Chinese-Chinese actress who is a star in China and who has bankability there and who they understand as a thing to celebrate if not exoticize. The Asian-American experience [is something] a lot of us as Asian-Americans really haven’t explored, because they lump us all into one. Asia can be Japan and it can be India; it’s a balance, and it’s not easy, and that’s probably why it’s easier for Hollywood to hire Chinese-Chinese actresses as opposed to people who fit the Asian-American mold, because a lot of people like to simplify problems. It’s terrifying to say, ‘This is a thing that is complex and worthy of our time,’ but it is complex, and that’s why you’re not going to always find an easy, palatable answer. I think [the show is] trying to approach that complexity in a very traditionally simplistic form. And I think if we can do that, it’s almost its own type of activism.”
Constance Wu photographed for Marie Claire (August 2018)
First, we need to delineate the difference between diversity and representation. For so long, Hollywood studios have thought that diversity is putting a person of color in there to check off a box. And when we talk about representation, it’s stories where our culture is not neutralized, where it’s not like, Oh, anybody can play this. No! We don’t want to say anyone can play this. Only we can play this because this is our story and we are not ashamed of it. We’re proud of it.
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