Constance Wu
Constance Wu is an actor, born 1982.
Constance Wu spent roughly a decade in films almost nobody saw before anything happened. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1982, she took small parts in independents through the late 2000s and early 2010s: Stephanie Daley, The Architect, Sound of My Voice, Electric Slide, the web series EastSiders. It is an entirely ordinary working actor's resume, right up to the point where Fresh Off the Boat arrived.
Jessica Huang is the performance to argue from. Wu played her at maximum: a mother whose disapproval has the timing of a stand-up and the force of a weather system, pitched at a level that would collapse in almost anyone else's hands. The sitcom ran on ABC from 2015 to 2020 and brought her four Critics' Choice Television nominations.
Crazy Rich Asians made her a film lead and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a musical or comedy, which made her the fourth Asian woman to receive one. Hustlers is the better performance and much the harder one, since Destiny has to be sympathetic and unreliable at the same time and Wu never signposts the switch. The work since has spread wide rather than up: voice roles in Wish Dragon, Next Gen and The Lego Ninjago Movie, family comedy in Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, thriller television in The Terminal List, and The Friend in 2025.
Movies (17)
- The Outer Threat (2026)
- The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)
- Wish Dragon (2021)
- Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
- Hustlers (2019)
- The Friend (2025)
- Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (2022)
- Next Gen (2018)
- Family Feud (2018)
- The Feels (2017)
- Halftime (2022)
- Sound of My Voice (2011)
- Parallels (2015)
- 100 Years (2017)
- The Architect (2006)
- Stephanie Daley (2007)
- Electric Slide (2014)
TV (7)
Where to start with Constance Wu
Everything rests on Fresh Off the Boat, still the strongest argument for her, though you can sample rather than commit: the early seasons establish Jessica completely, and the show never improves on that.
Hustlers is the film to watch. Destiny is a harder part than Crazy Rich Asians gave her, and Wu plays the drift from need to appetite without a single moment of underlining.
Crazy Rich Asians is still the one that made her a name, a glossy romantic comedy where her whole job is staying grounded while everything around her spends money. If you want the pre-fame Wu, Sound of My Voice is genuinely good and genuinely strange. The Terminal List is the pivot into thriller television, and Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is the family pick.