编者按:这个故事包含spoilers from the first half of “The Circle” season four.

When contestants on “The Circle” enter the famous apartments they inhabit during the competition, they have to bring their personable A-game, considering they interact only with the other players via social media.

Luckily for San Francisco native and Lowell High School alum Yu Ling Wu, growing up in the Bay Area taught her to always lead with the most authentic version of herself. Bringing “all that and dim sum” to the Netflix hit series’ fourth season, Wu describes herself as a “fun-size firecracker,” measuring at just under 5 feet tall, and absolutely dripping in memorable outfits and eyeshadow looks.

Wu and the other contestants on the show — releasing new episodes Wednesdays through May 25 — are vying for a $150,000 prize in a social competition where they must become the most popular player in the game. They can choose to come in and play as themselves, or pretend to be someone else entirely, creating a catfish profile to communicate with the other players over chat. Every week the competitors rate each other from most to least liked. The most popular players then become “influencers,” who must decide which of their competitors to “block,” or eliminate, from the game.

In a season packed with surprises — including Spice Girls Melanie “Mel B.” Brown and Emma Bunton temporarily joining the cast as a catfish — Wu shocked viewers in the episodes released May 11 after becoming an influencer and deciding to block fellow player Crissa Jackson moments after the both of them and Frank Grimsley had built a new connection in a group chat before the ratings.

She once again sent shock waves among the group after a “glitch” twist was introduced in the game where select players were infected with a virus and the rest had to choose whom to share an antivirus software with to keep them from being blocked. Wu chose to save Rachel Evans with the special power over Alyssa Ljubicich, whom she had built a strong alliance with early in the season alongside Josh Brubaker (known in the game as Bru). Viewers won’t know who’s saved from the virus twist elimination until more episodes drop on Wednesday, May 18.

The Chronicle spoke with Wu about her time on “The Circle,” being catfished by the Spice Girls, as well as some of the jaw-dropping decisions she’s made so far on the show. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Given the social environment you grew up in in San Francisco, how do you think that affected your play and how you interacted with the other players in “The Circle”?

A:I mean, 100%. I live in New York now. And there’s that whole thing where they say like, “People on the West Coast stab you in the back and people on the East Coast stab you in the front.” I think it really is (like that) because the nature of S.F. is we’re so chill here. We’re really just so sweet and we’re so polite. But if you do something to us, we’re like … I hate you, you know?

And then I also (have) the New York attitude I’ve recently adopted, like a “don’t f— with me” kind of thing. But also, I went to school at Lowell. You know the nature of Lowell High School, extremely competitive. You need to be No. 1. You’ve gotta ace everything. That definitely contributed to how competitive I am in games in general.

The only thing is, as you may have seen in the previous episodes, I play with my heart. I play with my gut.

Q: We have to talk about the Spice Girls. How did it feel to be catfished by them? Not just be on the show with them, but having them play the profile of Jared.

A:I mean, a privilege, a blessing. Like, the best thing ever. I didn’t even care that they were catfishing us. The fact that we were in the same building as the Spice Girls is enough.

Q: Have they reached out to you yet?

A:Oh my God, no. I wish. This is day one of my campaign to get the Spice Girls to follow me back on Instagram.

But, I will say (the reveal) was … You saw the reaction. I was floored. I couldn’t say anything. I had no words. (The producers) were like, “Can we get a reaction?” I’m like, “This is the reaction you’re gonna get.”

Q: There have been a few moments where the game would be like, “Alert!” and we see everyone’s big reactions to the message, and your face is like … deadpan.

A:Because every time there’s an alert, I’m like, “What fresh hell is this? What are you about to do to me?” It’s not even like, “Ooh, it’s gonna be fun.” It’s like, “What’s gonna go on now?”

Q: I feel like the group chat that you did with Crissa and Frank took too long to happen. But when it finally did, the conversation felt so genuine. Did it feel like that while you were in the room?

A:I had been asking to chat with Frank and Crissa for the longest time. Like I really, really wanted to talk to them because I just knew, based on vibes alone, it was just perfect. To let her go (after that) broke my heart. I felt like I just let a real one go.

It’s difficult because so many people want to talk to you, or they want to talk to a lot of other people. Sometimes the timing just doesn’t match up, so when that finally happened, thank God, everything that I was feeling was validated. But then (in the end) it was just not enough time.

Q: Can you tell us more about how getting to talk to other contestants works?

A:你有一个优先级列表的人你想要的to talk to. And sometimes it just doesn’t always happen, because they might be talking to somebody else, or they might not want to talk to you necessarily that day. But that’s the hard part—you want to talk to everyone in the game. That’s the whole point: You want to get to know everyone and see who is the strongest in terms of alliances, or vibes or whatever.

So the timing of (the chat with Crissa and Frank) was just … it was almost laughable that they gave me the chat with these two people that I was loving, and then immediately I became an influencer and they’re like, “Well, now one of these people has to go.”

Q: OK, let’s talk about difficult decisions, I think you know what’s coming up. When you picked Rachel and not Alyssa when you guys had the virus twist …

A:I know people are going to scalp me for that decision. The situation was Alyssa was such a strong player at that point in time, and I had to choose between two alliances. I genuinely feel like I was given the hardest choices in the freaking game. I had Bru and Alyssa, and Frank and Rachel, and the No. 1 detail I remembered was that Alyssa said they don’t get along, Rachel and Nathan (a catfish played by Alex Brizard).

So, in my head I was thinking, Frank chose me because he trusts me. And I don’t want to mess that up. He wants me to choose Rachel, and I think it’s in my good interest to choose Rachel as well, because I really enjoyed Rachel. My thinking was, if I choose Rachel, Rachel will choose Alyssa, because she’s not close with Nathan and that will keep both of my alliances intact. Because the whole point is, you need to think about who that person wants you to save, you know?

Q: And it did not work out like that.

A:I feel like I’m gonna get a lot of heat for it. But, at the end of the day, a lot of other people had to make decisions on who they had to choose too.

New episodes of“The Circle”(TV-MA) are released Wednesdays on Netflix through May 25.