TMC
05-16-2016, 03:43 AM
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/05/11/how_fresh_off_the_boat_s_constance_wu_found_the_essence_of_her_character.html
On last week’s episode (http://forums.previously.tv/topic/42880-s02e22-gotta-be-me/?do=getNewComment) of Fresh Off the Boat, Mama Huang, played by Constance Wu, remembers the story of how she adopted her American name, Jessica. Their friendly white neighbors Marv, Honey, and Deirdre populate her flashback even though Louis points out that they didn’t go to school with her. “All white people look the same,” she says with a wave of her hand. “It flips the lens on a familiar trope where white people think basically that all other ethnicities look the same,” showrunner Nahnatchka Khan told me. “She’s like, Let’s not even.”
In other words, it was just another gem from Jessica Huang, who weekly delivers some of the best lines on TV, expressing confusion about mainstream white culture (“For who could ever love a cabbage-faced baby?”) or keeping her family in line (“Did you tell him not to date rape?”). In a way, she’s an on-screen representation of the Tiger Mom—the oft-misunderstood Asian American mother who rules her children like a Marine. And yet through Wu’s performance, she becomes much greater than that.
At Vulture, we wanted to explore how a character like Jessica Huang comes together, so we spoke to Khan, Wu, and writers and executive producers Sanjay Shah and Kourtney Kang about how she went from an adaptation in Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, to the character we see on screen.
On last week’s episode (http://forums.previously.tv/topic/42880-s02e22-gotta-be-me/?do=getNewComment) of Fresh Off the Boat, Mama Huang, played by Constance Wu, remembers the story of how she adopted her American name, Jessica. Their friendly white neighbors Marv, Honey, and Deirdre populate her flashback even though Louis points out that they didn’t go to school with her. “All white people look the same,” she says with a wave of her hand. “It flips the lens on a familiar trope where white people think basically that all other ethnicities look the same,” showrunner Nahnatchka Khan told me. “She’s like, Let’s not even.”
In other words, it was just another gem from Jessica Huang, who weekly delivers some of the best lines on TV, expressing confusion about mainstream white culture (“For who could ever love a cabbage-faced baby?”) or keeping her family in line (“Did you tell him not to date rape?”). In a way, she’s an on-screen representation of the Tiger Mom—the oft-misunderstood Asian American mother who rules her children like a Marine. And yet through Wu’s performance, she becomes much greater than that.
At Vulture, we wanted to explore how a character like Jessica Huang comes together, so we spoke to Khan, Wu, and writers and executive producers Sanjay Shah and Kourtney Kang about how she went from an adaptation in Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, to the character we see on screen.