A young woman who said she’d dated the pop star accused him of targeting young and sometimes underage females for sex, allegations Wu denied.
Wu is one of the most valuable faces in China, serving as the face of Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Porsche, Lancôme, L’Oreal, Kans as well as Master Kong Ice Tea, Tuborg Brewery, household cleaning products maker Liby, kitchen appliances manufacturer Vatti, Tencent Video and Tencent’s popular video game King of Glory.
The Shanghai-based beauty brand Kans, owned by C-beauty giant Chicmax, was the first to react and announced Sunday evening that it has terminated Wu’s endorsement contract on Weibo. It was followed by Liby cutting ties with the celebrity on Monday morning.
Porsche, Master Kong Ice Tea, Vatti and King of Glory deleted all Weibo posts mentioning Wu by Sunday. Louis Vuitton temporarily hid all his posts on Weibo but made them public again shortly. His face still can be seen on Lancôme and Bulgari’s Chinese social media accounts.
Wu, a former member of the South Korean boy group EXO, was first accused of infidelity and preying on underaged girls on July 8 by Du Meizhu, a 19-year-old college student.
She shared screenshots of alleged conversations between Wu and underaged girls on Weibo and claimed that she has struggled with mental health, and even had suicidal thoughts due to his infidelity and cyberbullying from his fans.
Du alleged that Wu kept a special WeChat account to contact underage girls under the pretense of recruiting new artists or casting female leads for his music videos, eventually luring the girls into playing drinking games. Du said she was just one of his many conquests.
Wu and his team categorically denied the accusations and announced they had filed a defamation lawsuit against Du the same day.
However, over the weekend, Du revealed that she didn’t receive a court summons. Instead, she shared that Wu’s team reached out to her and proposed to settle the accusations with money. She posted a chat history of her negotiating the details of the settlement plan with Wu’s representative and a copy of the contract that his team offered her to sign, which she claimed to be a trap.
She later shared a video of her receiving two bank transfers totaling 500,000 renminbi from Wu Stacy Yu and Wu Yi Fan, which appeared to be Kris Wu’s mother’s name and his name in Chinese pinyin spelling.
In an interview with local press published on Sunday, Du said she had returned Wu the hush money in installments and was ready to face legal action. She also claimed that over 30 women who shared similar experiences with Wu had reached out to her, two of which are minors.
Wu then took to Weibo to address the issue more in depth, saying:
“I didn’t respond earlier because I did not want to disrupt the legal process but I didn’t imagine that my silence would accelerate this rumormonger, I cannot stand it any longer. I have only met this woman once on Dec. 5, 2020 while with a group of friends. I didn’t urge anyone to drink, did not take a phone number, moreover did not do any of the details she described. That day there were many people present that can be witness. I am very sorry it’s disturbed everyone. I declare I have never done any “selecting of concubines”! No luring for sex! No drugging to rape! No underage! If there was this behavior, everyone rest assured I would go to jail willingly. I fully understand the legal weight of my words above.”