The Constance Wu actor is back on the big screen with his first role in three years.
WU stars alongside Naomi Watts and Bill Murray in “The Friend”, a drama of feeling good about a writer who adopts a great Danish who belonged to his late friend and mentor. The film will be released on theaters on March 28.
It is a lighter role, but it is also sharing some heaviest thoughts.
The “Locos Rico Asian” and “recently out of the boat”
“I have noticed that with television and recent movies I’ve seen, representation is a bit less important when it comes to repair,” Wu said. “This could be good in terms of focusing on history and characters, [but] It could be bad in terms that people return to a limited imagination of what history and characters could be. ”
She said that she specifically questions the idea of ”authenticity” as a reason to put aside diversity.
“What does authenticity mean? It means the truth, and if you are really an artist, then you can find the truth in any circumstance, any character, face or any clothing article. How much do you want to challenge yourself? Sometimes people don’t like to be challenged,” he said.
The last annual diversity report of UCLA Hollywood showed that the white participation of all film roles increased from almost 60% by 2023 to 67% next year, while other groups of race and ethnic groups were still subreperate. For example, Asians represent only 5.5% and Latinos 3.6%.
This trend is further reflected in other aspects of Hollywood, since only 1 in 10 writers of theatrical films are people of color and only 2 out of 10 theater film directors are people of color.
Wu made his Hollywood progress with the 2018 romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asates”, which raised $ 239 million at the world box office. The success of the film marked the beginning of a new wave of stars and representation, making the way for films such as “Past Lives”, “All everywhere at once” and “Minari”.
“At your best, [these initiatives] It’s about expanding imagination, creativity and possibility, “Wu said.” But, if you are heavy and trapped in your paths, as director, you are limiting yourself. If you think it’s just trying to mark a box, that is not what is supposed to be and not what it should be, “he said about diversity on the screen.
Next to the performance, Wu has another job as the mother of two young children. The actress compared motherhood with the golden triangle of productivity: fast, cheap and good, and says you can only have two. Her version, she jokes, is the “golden triangle of motherhood”: clean house, personal and healthy children, and again, you can only have two.
“I really like having a clean house and I like to have happy and healthy children, so personal sanity goes out the window. This production triangle goes out the window if you are a man with a wife but, for mothers, even if you have a husband or help, that triangle is real,” Wu said.
