Constance Wu Explains Why She Doesn’t Clap Back at ‘Asian Incels’

Constance Wu has to deal with more than her fair share of internet trolls, and she knows which ones to ignore. At Vulture Festival Los Angeles last night, the “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Fresh Off the Boat” star was asked about her experience with “MRAsians” — Wu prefers the term “Asian incels,” short for “involuntarily celibate” — and explained that “a lot of Asian men are mad that one of my boyfriends was white.”

“They make this assumption that every single one of my boyfriends has been white based on the one boyfriend they’ve seen on my social media, who is the boyfriend that I was dating when I first started my account, all the way up until after ‘Fresh Off the Boat.’ Unless they think I was a virgin before I was 30, then…yeah,” she said.

“I don’t clap back online because I don’t feel the need to defend myself,” Wu added. “I am completely okay in my choices and why I make them — I’m very confident in that — so if somebody needs to target me in order to be part of a longer journey about how they feel about themselves or their place in the world, I think that’s fine.”

That explanation stemmed from a discussion about Wu asking to cut a line from the “Crazy Rich Asians” screenplay that was present in the book about not dating Asian men. “I do think that that is a topic that should have some story and its own voice, but I think what we were trying to do with ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is take that away, and in fact not even dignify that argument by putting it in there,” she said.

“In the book she says wow, I’ve never dated Asian guys before, but Nick is different. To say somebody is an exception to the rule is to reaffirm the rule.”