The Change Makers
Marie Claire - US|April 2019

Inclusion. Representation. Diversity. Agency. Equality. On-Screen And Off-Screen, Constance Wu, Ava Uvernay, And Jessica Chastain Are Shaping The Future Of Hollywood.

Allison Glock
The Change Makers
Constance Wu

On set for the fifth season of her ABC sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat, Constance Wu is pondering Shakespeare. She’s trying to decide if she should do a play on her hiatus, and “Shakespeare in the Park has been my dream since I was, like, 16.”

The 37-year-old actress started in theater, building her career onstage in New York. “I never did comedies. It’s funny, people only know you by the first project that made you big, like Fresh Off the Boat or Crazy Rich Asians.” Wu calls the latter hit romantic comedy a huge highlight of her life, in no small part because it silenced generations of naysayers who’d insisted a film starring an Asian cast couldn’t succeed at that scale.

“Diversity isn’t just ‘Let’s have people of color supporting this white person’s story,’ ” Wu says, adding it’s a distinction she finds herself explaining repeatedly in Hollywood. During a meeting with a prominent studio executive a few years ago, “this guy started to school me, like, ‘I think it’s great that you’re speaking up about diversity, but it’s just the reality of the numbers, what movies people go see, blah, blah, blah.’ And I just looked at him and said, ‘I think you’re dumb.’”

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