Actress Constance Wu spoke out in support of Amber Heard this week, claiming that she has tried to do so before but that her remarks have been cut from media coverage. Heard’s ex-husband Johnny Depp successfully sued her for defamation in a highly sensationalized trial earlier this year. Wu wonders why interviewers did not use her quotes on the matter since then.
Wu responded to a tweet by NBC News reporter Kat Tenbarge this week, which stated that Phoebe Bridgers is “one of the only prominent celebrities/artists to speak up about the double standards and victim-blaming in online culture around Amber Heard.” Wu wrote” “I’ve spoken up about the misogynist vilification of [Heard] to a few interviewers, but it’s always been left out of their final published articles. Could be [because] it wasn’t relevant to the article’s topic, BUT also could be telling in and of itself…”
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Wu gave those reporters the benefit of the doubt while also raising an interesting point about the coverage of Heard and Depp’s trial. Pundits have questioned how much influence the media exerted in covering the fiasco and how much it fanned the flames of online discourse. Wu’s experience – and the implication that other actors were treated the same – could indicate that support for Heard did not seem worthy of writing about. Wu added a bit more context in a follow-up comment later on.
“To be fair, there are lots of things I talk about in interviews that never make the cut I think [because] of word count limits and relevance to the writing assignment,” she wrote. Wu has been promoting her new book, Making a Scene, which was published earlier this month. It is a memoir covering her early life, her career beginnings and her work on productions including Fresh Off the Boat and Crazy Rich Asians.
Wu’s tweet picked up thousands of likes and retweets, as well as hundreds of comments and quote-tweets. Many simply took it as a chance to relitigate the Depp-Heard case in the court of public opinion once again. The case remains divisive, and the appeals process may keep it in the public consciousness for even longer.
Wu’s book Making a Scene is available now in print, digital and audiobook formats. She also has a role in Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which is playing now in theaters. Heard and Depp have not responded to Wu’s comments on their case.
