Constance Wu recalls traumatic sexual assault

US actress Constance Wu has claimed she was raped on a date, saying it took years for the trauma to “hit (her) like a flood.”

Constance Wu has claimed she was raped on a date at the beginning of her career — and the realisation didn’t hit her until years later because the assault “wasn’t violent.”

The US actress described her hesitancy at the end of her second date with an “aspiring novelist” named Ty in Vanity Fair’s excerpt of Making a Scene, her upcoming memoir.

Wu noted that she “ignored” a “twinge of warning in [her] gut” over his invitation to hang out at his place after dinner.

“He didn’t look threatening or shady in any way, and if you had been there, you would have agreed,” the Fresh Off the Boat alum, 40, added.

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Actress Constance Wu claimed she was raped early in her career. Picture: JB Lacroix / AFP

Wu went on to write that when she and Ty became intimate at his place, he did not stop once she asked him not to go any further.

“Some people might say that I should have fought back against Ty,” the Golden Globe nominee wrote of her reaction.

“But if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change how I reacted that night.

“Because when I think about the girl I was back then, I understand what she was going through,” Wu continued. “She wasn’t yet ready to bear the insults and derision that follow when women make scenes. And I wouldn’t make her do something before she was ready.”

After filming Crazy Rich Asians in 2018, the Hustlers star woke up from a nap when realisation of the assault “hit [her] like a flood.”

Constance Wu said the assault “hit like a flood” when she was finished filming Crazy Rich Asians in 2018.

Wu wrote that “maybe it wasn’t violent, but it was rape,” adding, “Ty raped me. He raped me, and I hadn’t done anything about it.”

The excerpt, published on Tuesday, comes on the heels of the New York Times reporting that Wu also opens up in the book about her experience allegedly being sexually harassed by a Fresh Off the Boat staff member.

The Terminal List star elaborated on the reveal during an Atlantic Panel festival on Friday.

“I kept my mouth shut for a really long time about a lot of sexual harassment and intimidation that I received the first two seasons of the show,” she said. “I thought, ‘You know what? I handled it, nobody has to know, I don’t have to stain this Asian American producer’s reputation, I don’t have to stain the reputation of the show.’”

Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu starred in Hustlers. Picture: Roadshow Films

Wu wrote Making a Scene, which will be released on October 4, while on a break from her career.

The I Was a Simple Man star also was not on social media platforms at the time, stepping back over hateful DMs. (Wu faced massive social media backlash when she expressed her anger over the renewal of Fresh Off the Boat in 2019.)

While Wu felt “afraid of coming back on social media,” she has been “dipping her toe back” in since July.

This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission