Constance Wu Tearfully Recalls Spending Time in ‘Psychiatric ER’ After Suicide Attempt

Constance Wu on Red Table Talk (Credit: Facebook Watch)

Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu broke down in tears on Red Table Talk while discussing the trauma she said she experienced while starring on the ABC sitcom.

The actress appeared on Wednesday’s episode of RTT to discuss her new book Making a Scene with hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.

During the conversation, Wu said she came close to taking her life after being inundated with negative comments when she tweeted that she wanted to be done with Fresh Off the Boat.

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The actress said a direct message from a former colleague — who called her a “blight on the Asian American community” — left her shattered.

“I read these DMs from an Asian actress, somebody who should have been my ally, and I felt like nothing I could ever do would be enough,” Wu recalled “I felt like the only thing that would prove to her that I felt as bad as she thought I deserved to feel would be if I died. I felt like even that might not be enough because I felt like the world was saying, ‘You will never suffer as much as you deserve to suffer. You deserve to pay for this and be punished for this.’”

Willow then asked, “Can you take us through how you ended up on the ledge of your fifth floor balcony?”

“It was after reading these DMs and I just got in this state,” Wu, 40, shared.

[Watch the video below]

She added that a concerned friend saved her life and took her to a psychiatric emergency room.

“A friend who had come to check on me pulled me over from climbing over the ledge, and dragged me into the elevator, and took me into a cab, and took me to a psychiatric emergency room where they checked me in,” Wu said. “And I slept the night on a cot in the waiting room in the psychiatric ER in New York City under observation. And then there were two counselors the next morning who talked to me. And then I had to be in therapy with a psychiatrist and a psychologist every day for a while.”

Fresh Off the Boat premiered in 2015 and after five seasons faced cancellation. But in May 2019, the show received a reprieve and was renewed for a sixth and final season.

While many in the Asian American community expressed excitement, up-and-coming actress Wu took to Twitter to share her disappointment the show would be returning. “So upset right now that I’m literally crying. Ugh. F–k,” she tweeted. Her posts sparked backlash, with many calling her ungrateful.

Wu told Red Table Talk part her disappointment was because she allegedly faced “sexual harassment and intimidation” from one of the show’s producers.

“This producer, he is an Asian American and the thing that was most painful was, he was so derogatory and harassing towards me but because this show was sort of a beacon of representation for Asian Americans, and I sort of became a symbol of representation, I didn’t want to sully the one show with sexual harassment claims against the one Asian American man who was doing all this better work for the community,” Wu said.

The Crazy Rich Asians and Hustlers star first opened up about her mental health struggles in a July post, explaining why she hadn’t been on social media in almost  three years.

You can watch the full interview with Constance Wu on Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk below.