Constance Wu reveals in her new memoir that she was committed to a mental hospital following her 2019 suicide attempt.
“I was dizzy, my puffy eyes blurred by tear-engorged contact lenses, my mouth pasty with unbrushed teeth, my hair in shambles because they even took away my hair elastics for fear I’d hurt myself with them,” the actress, 40, writes in “Making a Scene” of the moment she woke up in the psychiatric unit.
“I spent that night on a cot in the empty waiting room, under surveillance. Weeping until the exhaustion wore me out. The next morning, I told the two intake counselors what happened. That I almost jumped. That I’m very impulsive … That I needed help.”
Wu tried taking her own life after facing backlash for tweeting that she was “so upset” and “literally crying” over the 2019 renewal of her show “Fresh Off the Boat.”
The ABC sitcom — in which Wu played matriarch Jessica Huang — ended its six-season run in February 2020.
She previously stated that she had a negative reaction to the series’ renewal because it meant she had to “give up another project that I was really passionate about.”
Wu claims in “Making a Scene” that a former female co-star berated her over the social media outburst, prompting a deep state of emotional despair.
“That’s how I ended up clutching the balcony railing of my fifth-floor apartment and staring wildly down at the NYC street below with a reckless despair so total that my body ceased being a body and became a sound so dangerously high-pitched it was like nails on a chalkboard or a violin string pulled tight enough to cut flesh,” she recalls.
“The sound coursed through me and out of my fingertips like electricity as I started pulling myself over the railing.”
Luckily, a friend intervened to save Wu.
“[She] pried me from the balcony edge and dragged me to the elevator and down into a cab, where she breathlessly called my publicist for help because she was scared for my life,” the “Crazy Rich Asians” actress recounts, “but also scared of doing the wrong thing.”
Wu previously explained via Twitter that her book is “not always the most flattering portrayal” of herself. But it’s “as honest as I know how to be,” she noted.
“Because the truth is, I’m not poised or graceful or perfect. I’m emotional. I make mistakes…lots of ’em!” she wrote in July.
“After a little break from Hollywood and a lot of therapy I feel OK enough to venture back on here (at least for a little bit). And even though I’m scared, I’ve decided that I owe it to the me-of-3-years-ago to be brave and share my story so that it might help someone with theirs.”
“Making a Scene” is out now.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
