THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 49
As for demand, she told me that
she had a statistic that she was fond of
citing. “U.S. minorities represent $3.7
trillion in buying power, so it’s not mar-
keting to a multicultural audience that
isn’t sustainable,” she said. “The num-
bers don’t lie. We’re talking about the
census and how in, like, 2040—in twenty
years—we will be the majority.”
O
n my last afternoon in Hawaii, I
met up with Wu at her hotel. She’d
spent the morning on a hike with a na-
tive Hawaiian family, “to absorb the sound
of the island and its trees.” She was wear-
ing a cropped T-shirt, dark denim shorts,
and Havaianas flip-flops, and could have
passed for one of the tourists who drifted
around us, sporting seashell necklaces,
hair half wet, looking dazed from the
sun. She took a sip from her drink—a
perfect Manhattan with a twist, her fa-
vorite cocktail—and gazed out at the re-
ceding tide and the swaying palms.
I asked how much she thought sys-
temic bias had affected her career. She
cautioned that her particular background
predisposed her to notice it less than
someone else in her position might. But,
after a pause, she said that it had of
course come up. “When I first got ‘Fresh
Off the Boat,’ I noticed that all the parts
I was being offered afterward were what
I call ‘suits,’” she said. “They were law-
yers or professionals—you know, busi-
nesspeople. And I was, like, ‘That’s re-
ally weird, because, if you look at my
résumé, there is no evidence that this is
something that’s in my repertoire.’” S h e
went on, “People are, like, ‘We want to
include an Asian in our project because
we care about diversity. How can we
imagine an Asian being in our project?
Oh, she could totally play the lawyer,
she could totally play the agent.’”
I wondered if the sense of being pi-
geonholed had increased with her fame—
if she felt pigeonholed at this very mo-
ment, as I peppered her with questions
about her Asian-Americanness, when it
wasn’t the defining facet of her identity.
Wu sank back into her seat and pulled
one leg up. “Look, when Tom Cruise is
in an interview, people aren’t, like, ‘What’s
it like to be a white actor?’ My answers
coincide with Asian-American activism,
but that’s because those are the ques-
tions I’m being asked. It doesn’t mean
that I don’t believe in it and that I’m not
a proponent of it. But is it my reason for
being alive? No.”
Finally, I asked Wu about her trial
by Twitter. She sat up and rubbed her
temples. She had been taking a long
break from Twitter since the incident.
“Being messy in public is something—”
She stopped, adjusting her posture som-
brely, like a politician who realizes that
this is the question on which people
will base their vote. “I’m not proud of
what I said,” she continued. “But I also
think that it was how I was feeling in
the moment, and we all have days where
we feel differently, and I don’t think it
represents my entire character.”
Wu wondered if role models—“and
I don’t want to be a fucking role model,
I’m an artist”—should be allowed to be a
little less pure. “Wouldn’t that make peo-
ple feel a lot less lonely when they were
having the feelings and emotions that
weren’t the prescribed ones?” she asked.
She paused. “I’m glad people are
talking shit about me, because it makes
me think about other people’s feelings
and the effects of things,” she said. “It’s
like negotiating authenticity with obli-
gation, and I don’t have an answer ei-
ther way, because I think you have to
actually clarify what your obligations are
first and what your authenticity is first.”
O
n my way back from Hawaii, I
thought about Wu’s authenticity,
and I kept coming back to the day we’d
spent with her acting coach. After her
private session, she had stayed around
for a group class that night.
“It’s funny,” Archibald said. “It was
only after she landed ‘Fresh’ that she
said, ‘Now I’m gonna come to group
class.’ ” Wu considered this for a second,
nodding. Later, she told me, “Sure, my
career is doing well. But in class we’re
talking about art, not career. Everything
else—success, career, money, accolades—
that all gets left at the door.”
There were only five students that
evening—two of the regulars were off
playing a zombie and a mobster. A red-
head who bore a passing resemblance
to Christina Hendricks arrived, followed
by a young, square-jawed man in tight
black jeans. Wu sat quietly on the couch,
her eyes trained on a script, as the oth-
ers made small talk about the recent
earthquake and snacked on chips. The
actors did brief scenes from various sit-
coms they were auditioning for. Rest-
ing her chin on the back of her hand,
Wu watched with coiled stillness, her
only movements the lines of pleasure
and surprise that occasionally registered
on her forehead.
When her turn came, Wu chose an
emotionally lacerating eight-minute
scene from “Middletown,” a play by Will
Eno. She was reading the role of a young
man who has just attempted suicide and
is now trying to make sense of the ex-
perience with a doctor. Wu had told me
earlier that she’d always loved the play,
but has come to understand the char-
acter only by speaking his lines. “It’s so
babbly,” she said. “On the page, it looks
so poetic. But then, when I was saying
it out loud, I realized, No, this is some-
body who is covering up, who is ner-
vous. Because if he doesn’t babble he’s
gonna break.”
As she began to speak, the defensive-
ness she’d shown earlier that day dis-
solved. And although she now sat jit-
tery with vulnerability, inhabiting a
character whose fragility reverberated
across the room, it occurred to me later
that this was the most at ease I ever saw
her. She folded her arms across her chest,
her elbows shifting impatiently, a haunted
expression softening her features as she
struggled to speak, sometimes through
tears. Her voice, when it came out, was
gauzy with depth and delicacy: “I wanted
to be an emergency somehow. I always
felt like I was one deep down.”
Wu finished and said, “Ugh, I was
watching myself too much, so weaving
in and out.” She wiped her nose and
eyes, which were still damp.
“But you just got right back into it,”
Archibald said gently.
“The reason I love this scene is that
I love when he says, ‘I want to be an
emergency somehow. My life’ ”—she
said, transitioning to the voice of the
character—“‘has become a little bit static.
Like, I don’t know if I’m important to
somebody.’” She blinked up at the ceil-
ing and repeated, “I wanted to be an
emergency.” The room was so quiet that
you could hear the rustle of the pages
as Wu dropped the script into her lap.
“Ask this question,” Archibald prod-
ded. “What is your relationship with
yourself ?”
“Gosh, that’s a good question,” Wu
said slowly. “I don’t know.”
