Fresh off the success of Crazy Rich Asians, Constance Wu celebrated by…
getting right back to work on Fresh Off the Boat.
“The scheduling has been challenging, to say the least, but the experience of going back, other than the scheduling, has been just great,” Wu tells EW of shooting her ABC family sitcom while doing press for her hit film.
“It’s kind of nice to have the stability and the family-like atmosphere of our show. Everyone there, we’ve known each other for over four years, most of the crew and all of the cast, so it’s very familiar,” Wu says of the comfort of returning to the Fresh Off the Boat for season 5, which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET. “We’ve done four seasons, so there’s not that much pressure. And when you don’t have pressure, you can be free and experiment with the characters and play around.”
In season 5 of the comedy, Wu‘s character, mom-of-three Jessica, is getting her own taste of the spotlight as her crime thriller, A Case of a Knife to the Brain, is published.
“You’re going to see her deal with the realities of publishing and putting her work out there, and what it means to her and how it will affect her whole family,” says Wu.
Plus, NBA superstar Scottie Pippen guest-stars as himself, Jessica and Louis’ (Randall Park) eldest son, Eddie (Hudson Yang), is learning to drive, and neighbors Honey (Chelsey Crisp) and Marvin (Ray Wise) bring home their baby.
“It’s interesting to see the different parenting styles,” says Wu, who adds that, of course, “Jessica has her opinions.”
As for the much-discussed Crazy Rich Asians sequel, which has been put into development by Warner Bros., Wu is waiting until the project has been officially greenlit to let herself get too excited.
“I’m just enormously grateful. But, I mean, I feel like we’re jumping the shark a little bit because it hasn’t been greenlit,” she says. “They’ve just been given the go-ahead to start writing it, and of course studios always have notes and want it to go a certain way, so I’m trying not to put the cart before the horse and [instead] be like, ‘Oh great, this gesture shows that they have interest and appreciate the work that we have done and are doing.’ And that is a win, but we don’t really know what’s going to happen.”
