
Constance Wu says she's worried about backsliding of Hollywood diversity amid DEI rollbacks
Actor Constance Wu is back on the big screen with her first role in three years.
Wu stars alongside Naomi Watts and Bill Murray in 'The Friend,' a feel-good dramedy about a writer who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to her late friend and mentor. The movie will be out in theaters on March 28.
It's a lighter role, but she's also sharing some heavier thoughts.
The 'Crazy Rich Asians' and 'Fresh Off the Boat' star said she's worried about potentially 'repressive and backward' steps related to diversity in Hollywood amid all the larger national rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
'I have noticed that with recent TV and movies I've seen, representation is a little less important when it comes to casting,' Wu said. 'This could be good in terms of focusing on story and characters, [but] it could be bad in terms of people reverting to limited imaginations of what story and characters could be.'
She said she specifically questions the idea of 'authenticity' as a reason to sidestep diversity.
'What does authenticity mean? It means the truth, and if you're really an artist then you can find the truth in any circumstance, any character, any face or any article of clothing. How much do you want to challenge yourself? Sometimes people don't like to be challenged,' she said.
The latest annual UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report showed that the white share of all film roles increased from almost 60% in 2023 to 67% the next year, while other race groups and ethnicities were still underrepresented. For example, Asians make up only 5.5% and Latinos 3.6%.
This trend is further reflected in other aspects of Hollywood, as only 1 in 10 theatrical film writers are people of color and only 2 in 10 theatrical film directors are people of color.
Wu made her Hollywood breakthrough with the 2018 rom-com 'Crazy Rich Asians,' which grossed $239 million at the box office worldwide. The success of the movie ushered in a new wave of stars and representation, making the way for movies such as 'Past Lives,' 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' and 'Minari.'
'At its best, [these initiatives] are about expanding imagination, creativity and possibility,' Wu said. 'But, If you are stodgy and stuck in your ways, as a director, you're limiting yourself. If you think it's just about trying to check off a box, that's not what it's supposed to be and not what it should be,' she said about onscreen diversity.
Alongside acting, Wu has another job as the mother of two young children. The actress compared motherhood to 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 sanity and happy and healthy kids — and again, you can only have two.
'I really like having a clean house and I like having happy and healthy children, so personal sanity goes out the window. This production triangle goes out the window if you're a man with a wife but, for mothers, even if you have a husband or help, that triangle is real,' Wu said.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
I'm breaking free from watching TV on my laptop in bed. I'm going back to the big screen
Last week, a touching moment with a stranger reminded me why I love attending the movies. I had just emerged from the darkness of the Ritz Cinemas in Sydney's east, snot visibly dripping from my nose and my face blotchy-red. A Great Dane had done this to me, or, more specifically, the Great Dane in The Friend, a lovely adaptation of Sigrid Nunez's novel of the same name. Descending the stairs under the artificial lights of the cinema, I asked my friend if I 'looked insane'. She had spent the film gently rubbing me on the arm and at one point asking me if I was 'OK to continue watching' as I sobbed in dramatic gasps, overwhelmed by the story of a woman developing a bond with the dog of her late friend, both of them wrapped in grief. As my friend instructed me to get a tissue, a woman turned towards us, also sporting the blotchy-faced look, and told me she felt the same. We gushed at how much we had loved the movie and how prone we were to crying over dogs. As we shuffled into the street, I was moved by the feeling of connection we'd both felt – a shared experience between strangers. When this year's Sydney film festival draws to a close, I will have seen just under a dozen movies in a fortnight (thanks to a Flexipass that made it somewhat more affordable), dipping into stories from Ireland to Australia, France and Zambia. It's rare these days that I attend the cinema for new releases, so prone as I am to mindlessly scrolling through Netflix. I'm not the only one. According to Screen Australia, cinema attendance has been in steady decline for decades. At first, an upsurge in video hire was to blame. Then the proliferation of streaming services arrived, coupled with a Covid-induced shutdown. At its height, people would attend the cinema around 11 times a year in the early to mid-1990s. By 2023, it had dropped to just under five, and only 59% of Australians had visited the movies in the past year. Globally, it's a similar picture. According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, cinema ticket sales dropped 8.8% annually in 2024 and were still about 30% below pre-Covid levels. Amid a cost-of-living crisis, it may not come as a huge surprise. The average price of a cinema ticket rose from $13.60 in 2014 to $17.26 in 2024 according to Screen Australia, not to mention popcorn, drinks and transport. Straight-to-streaming has also become more common as the new iteration of direct-to-video, ushering hundreds of movies straight to the digital sphere without a run in the theatres. But attending the movies has forced me to break free of my regular weeknight ritual to watch random reality television on my laptop in bed while simultaneously scrolling through my iPhone. And it has reignited my love of cinema. There's something special about spending two hours in a dark room, with no distractions, while sharing your reactions to a movie in real-time with strangers. In horror movies, I have screamed in unison with hundreds of people and burst into laughter at unexpected jump-reveals. I have been moved by beautiful dialogue and cinematography in a way that is so easy to miss on a small screen without the temptation of my phone or the chatter of the outside world. I often wonder if I have become a zombie to streaming services, enticed to watch yet another bad sitcom because I was tempted by the last one, or forced on to the bandwagon of the latest viral television show because it's in the top 10 list. With film festivals, and cinema programs more broadly, I get to take time to read about directors I may not have heard of, to curate my own experience based on my preferences – not those of the great algorithm in the sky. In a world that has become so fractured and, at times, so lonely, I hope the magic of a plush red chair, the curtains unfurling and seeing the opening credits on a big screen is something we don't take for granted. Caitlin Cassidy is education reporter for Guardian Australia


Metro
4 days ago
- Metro
Best Summer Game Fest 2025 trailers: Mortal Shell 2, Stranger Than Heaven & more
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There were a lot of great looking games at the show, but this might have been our favourite, with its 40s style animation reminiscent of a 3D Cuphead. It's a bit hard to tell exactly what's going on with the story but you seem to be playing an alcohol abusing cartoon character who's been tricked by the Devil into… taking part in a third person action roguelite, that also has three-player co-op. There's no release date but if it looks as good as it plays it'll be doing very well indeed. The final reveal before Resident Evil Requiem was what was previously codenamed Project Century and while it looks like a Yakuza spin-off it's not actually part of the franchise, even though it's by the same developer. Sega didn't explain much, but when the game was first introduced it was set in Japan in 1915 and yet this trailer is set in 1943 (i.e. in the middle of the Second World War). More Trending Given the codename that probably implies you're playing in multiple time periods across the whole century. There was no mention of formats or a release date though, so it's probably still quite a while away from release. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Call Of Duty 2026 campaign has a brand new setting for Modern Warfare says leak MORE: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gets Switch 2 upgrade but there's a problem MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 GameChat feature doesn't censor swear words


Time Out
4 days ago
- Time Out
Eddie Huang is doing a Chinese-meets-Greek restaurant pop-up at NYC's The Flower Shop
Eddie Huang has come a long way from hawking Chairman Bao buns at the beloved Baohaus. Since his days cheffing in the Lower East Side, Huang's long resume lists hosting duties on the Cooking Channel, MTV and Vice, a documentarian, a producer and a best-selling author of two books, one of which spawned the ABC series, 'Fresh Off the Boat.' But it seems as thought the restaurant world truly never left him, as the multi-hyphenated talent is returning to lower Manhattan for a summer-long residency. Starting June 11, Huang will be taking over the kitchen of The Flower Shop, only a ten-minute walk from his former haunt. Named Gazebo, the residency was inspired by Huang's experimentations cooking traditional Chinese dishes in olive oil sourced from his wife's family's field in Greece. On his Substack, Canal Street Dreams, Huang spoke about how this simple swap created an entirely new profile. 'At home, I use the olive oil from Natashia's family field in Greece to reimagine Chinese food that's usually made with high heat oils,' said Huang. 'By simply changing the way I apply heat due to the character of olive oil, it's completely changed my cooking and it comes out tasting like Chinese food from a blue zone.' Huang's personal and worldwide culinary influences come through with small plates of cherrystone clams with pancetta noodles to a scallop ceviche dish with Marcona almonds that reflects his time with the seafood legend of Lima, chef Javier Wong. Large plates explore the cuisines even further as his red cooked pork stars Iberian pancetta and the chopped chili fluke is made with his wife's blend of oil, named, 'Natashia's sizzling oil.' Dessert finishes with a griddled Kossar's chocolate babka with ice cream. The pop-up will run on select dates from June until September. The first round will start this month on June 11 to June 13, followed by July 9 to July 11, August 6 to August 8 and September 10 to September 12. Dinner is $80 per person, which includes your choice of small plate, a large plate and dessert. Reserve your table here.