Crazy Rich Asians star Constance Wu bares all in stripper smash hit, Hustlers
After starring as the squeaky clean love interest on smash hit Crazy Rich Asians, Constance Wu has revealed a whole new side of herself — literally — while coiled around a stripper’s pole alongside Jennifer Lopez.
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After her breakout success as the unassuming, self-deprecating Rachel Chu in last year’s hit comedy Crazy Rich Asians, some might be a little surprised to see Constance Wu coiled around a stripper’s pole in Hustlers.
Those people, it would appear, don’t know Wu very well.
“I’ll tell you what,” Wu confides. “My family was not surprised at all. So that says a little something about my public persona versus the me that my family knows, right?
“My family is highly academic, they’re all really clean-cut, straight-laced, and I’ve always been the outlaw, the clown, the one they’re never surprised by when I do something crazy.
“Actually, they’re more surprised if time goes by without me doing anything crazy. Then they’re like, ‘What’s wrong with Constance? Something must be wrong.’”
With this in mind, perhaps hers was a calculated decision to distance herself from her rather squeaky-clean persona, also seen on the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, in which she plays a wife and a mother of three?
“I made this choice, not because I wanted to do a sexy movie, but because it was about friendship,” she says.
“It was a story that I thought was important. It humanised these girls. The stripping stuff, that’s fun, but it wasn’t at the heart of it for me.”
Hustlers, set in New York City, in 2007, with the world on the brink of the global financial crisis, is based on a New York Magazine story about a sisterhood of strippers, led by Jennifer Lopez’s character, who take the law into their own hands and turn the tables on a group of corrupt Wall Street heavyweights.
The girls spike their drinks, pilfer their wallets, and rack up their credit cards.
When the 37-year-old Wu is asked if she’s ever resorted to amoral behaviour to make ends meet, she’s surprisingly candid.
“When I was a struggling theatre actress I was a waitress for a really long time,” she admits.
“There were little tricks. People would sign the bill but they’d forget to fill in the tip.
“So, you’d just fill it in. But I had integrity.
“I would only fill in (the standard) 20 per cent, but maybe they didn’t even want to give me that. So maybe it’s not that much integrity.”
Wu was born in Richmond, Virginia, to parents who had emigrated from Taiwan. Her father is a doctor and genetics professor, her mother a computer programmer.
Wu studied psycholinguistics at New York’s Columbia University with a view to pursuing a career in speech pathology.
During her time in New York she dabbled in regional theatre as well as appearing in Law & Order: SVU, and One Life To Live.
“I moved to Los Angeles because a boy broke my heart so badly that I couldn’t live in New York any more,” she says.
Evidently, it was a prescient decision, which led to her landing the starring role in Fresh Off the Boat, based on the 2013 memoir by Eddie Huang, and now in a sixth season.
Hustlers has already made close to $150 million from its $30 million budget.
Wu believes it has struck a chord with audiences — beyond the obvious titillation factor — because it’s “a female empowerment story but it’s also about what the systemic culture influences do to men”.
“Our culture tells men they’re only worth the size of their bank accounts,” she says.
“It makes sense that men will do illegal things in order to acquire the money that our culture says they need in order to be valuable men.
“That’s why we had the financial collapse. Men did shady things to get more power, so ultimately they’d be loved.”
In researching the world of strip clubs, she was surprised by her discoveries.
“I became friends with a lot of the women who worked in the clubs — some I expect will be lifelong friends,” she says.
“What I found is a lot of the guys I met at the clubs weren’t gross perverts.
“So it’s a perfect combination: they just want a girl to be nice to them, and the girl gets the money.” She pauses.
“But she’s not going home with them.”
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Naturally, Wu required the necessary skills to be a convincing pole dancer.
Co-star Cardi B, a former stripper, put her experience to good use.
“I did private lessons. I had a pole installed in the middle of my living room, though it didn’t go great with my decor. And I had to get used to wearing those 8-inch shoes,” she laughs.
“But Cardi B was probably the best tutor.”
Wu was named one of Time’s Most Influential People (in 2017) and made history when she nabbed a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Crazy Rich Asians, the first time in more than 40 years an Asian woman was recognised in that category.
Hustlers shows just how far she’s come on her relatively fast-track ride to stardom.
“Oh my God, never in a million years would I have imagined I’d be starring in a movie with JLo, and about pole dancers,” she smiles.