Constance Wu

All the networks have always been willing to have ethnic people as the third or fourth lead or the best friend to the white person. But to actually let a black family or an Asian family carry a show, that's something where there hasn't really been a precedent set in terms of a real financial gain.

My family is Chinese-Taiwanese. I'm from Richmond, Virginia. The community in which I grew up was pretty white. The storybooks you got at school featured white children and an animal, or animals, and as you got older, the novels you were assigned were about, like, the problems of white boys and their dogs.

My first Asian role model was Michelle Kwan. Her beauty comes from within. She's also really beautiful on the outside. But when I first saw her ice-skate, her performance was so moving and beautiful that she just glowed.

I was emotional. I wanted to be taken seriously. I was pretty emo. I was reciting Shakespeare monologues when I was 10. I still know the whole 'To be, or not to be...' monologue, because I knew it when I was 10.

It's my privilege to be able to play somebody not myself. I'm an actor who creates characters based in voice, movement, emotional quality, speech.

My parents did not pay a cent for my education; they didn't give me a car or furniture - I did that 100% on my own. I had to pay back a lot.

If you watch any show that stars white people, white people aren't coming up to them like, 'Thank you for showing my face on the big screen.' Because they see their faces in popular culture all the time.

There were so few Asians on-screen when I grew up, and the ones who were on-screen weren't given complex characters to play.

A lot of times, people think of Asian culture as some mythical world instead of modern people with modern occupations with modern problems, modern tools. Like, we're not all just talking Taoism and kung fu - some people are just trying to get over their breakup with their boyfriend, and they're Facebook-stalking.

Make sure your work is never results-oriented. The result is a byproduct of the work, in a way.

I'm not a naturally social-media inclined person. I still prefer phone calls to texts/emails. I... hate texts.

Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent.