Audiobook Review: Making a Scene by Constance Wu

Making a Scene by Constance Wu
Narrator: Constance Wu
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: October 04, 2022
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions. “Good girls don’t make scenes,” people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, and eventually her vocation. At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians.

Here Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she “made it” in Hollywood. Raw, relatable, and enthralling, Making a Scene is an intimate portrait of the pressures and pleasures of existing in today’s world.

I know Constance Wu from her starring role in Crazy Rich Asians. She also starred in the TV series Fresh Off the Boat. I never watched that but I remember there was a big to-do when she tweeted that she was disappointed that the show was NOT canceled. People thought that she was an ungrateful brat and she got a lot of hate for it.

One of the reasons I chose Making a Scene is because I wanted to hear Constance’s side of the story. She does address the tweet towards the end of the book and is very apologetic about it. And her explanation of her feelings at the time makes sense.

The rest of the book kind of feels like an apology tour. Several of the essays are about situations that she wishes she would have handled better and apologizing to the people affected. Conversely, some of the essays are about people who should be apologizing to her, like one of the producers of Fresh Off the Boat who sexually harassed her and a couple of really awful boyfriends.

Speaking of boyfriends, she is very candid and descriptive about her sex life. I didn’t mind but it did take me by surprise for some reason. Maybe because I was assuming she would be more demure like her character in Crazy Rich Asians. I actually love it when celebrities give me the down-and-dirty.

Recommended.