Karen Fukuhara will return to television with the highly-anticipated third season of The Boys on Amazon Prime in just a few months, but the actress has now come forward with some upsetting news and a call for accountability. She has shared that she was attacked by a man who struck her in the head, and felt that it was important to tell the story on her public platform despite rarely sharing about her private life.
Fukuhara took to Instagram on March 16 to explain the situation. After revealing that she’d been struck on the head by a stranger and reassuring fans that she’s “physically fine,” she went on to state that “this shit needs to stop” and “women, Asians, and the elderly need your help.” She detailed the incident, before going on to call for accountability:
I was walking to a cafe for some coffee and a man struck me in the back of my head. It came out of nowhere. We made no eye contact before, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. It came to my surprise and my hat flew off. By the time I looked back, he was a few feet away from me (he must have kept walking after hitting me). I thought about confronting him first but he started coming towards me and I didn’t think it was worth the risk. After a few seconds of staring at each other, and him yelling at me, he eventually walked away.
The actress was struck “out of nowhere” by a man, and she didn’t feel comfortable confronting him when he had already attacked her. Her statement at the beginning of her post at least reassured that she was okay physically, but it was clearly an upsetting incident from what was supposed to be a simple walk to a cafe.
Being hit hard enough from behind that her hat flew off indicates that there was certainly some force behind it, so it’s fortunate that she wasn’t injured. Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Karen Fukuhara was targeted for her race, although she revealed that she had never been physically harmed before. She continued:
This is the first time I’ve been harmed physically, although racial slurs and hurtful actions have been directed to me in the past. I write this, because I’ve had conversations with multi-racial friends of mine that had no idea these hate crimes happen to everyday, regular people – people that they share meals with. I felt it was important to raise awareness.
Karen Fukuhara opening up about being hit on the head lends her voice to those of other stars like Marvel’s Simu Liu (who spoke about his fears for his parents’ safety), Lost alum Daniel Dae Kim in an appeal to Congress about the rise in anti-Asian violence, and Into the Badlands’ Daniel Wu, who joined Kim in offering an reward for information after an elderly man was attacked. Fukuhara’s personal experience and conversations with her friends should help shed more light on the issue.
The actress finished off her post by explaining how the shock of this experience has already affected her:
Ultimately I know I got lucky. He could have come back to hit me again. He could have carried a weapon. The shock of this experience has me thinking about taking self defense classes. But why is this something we as ‘victims’ have to think about? What satisfaction are these perpetrators getting from hitting women, Asians, the ELDERLY? They need to be held accountable. What can we do to prevent these horrible crimes?
Karen Fukuhara included the hashtag of #stopasianhate and linked to the Instagram post on her Twitter account. The comment section is full of people showing their support, including co-stars Jack Quaid and Chace Crawford from The Boys.
With her platform as a star of a popular TV show based on groundbreaking comics, hopefully Karen Fukuhara’s call for accountability will yield some results and spread some further awareness about the anti-Asian violence. It was brave of her to share an experience like this when she usually prefers to keep her private life private.
