Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Sandra Oh

Episode Date: August 29, 2021

Sandra Oh is best known for her role as Dr. Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy, which earned her five consecutive Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe award. Since ending her run on that show, she has starred in and executive produced the hit series Killing Eve, hosted the Golden Globes and Saturday Night Live, and been named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist gets together with Oh to talk about that success as well as her latest project, playing a trailblazer in the new Netflix series The Chair. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. My guest this week is a Golden Globe winner and just a delightful person to talk with. Sandra O. She, of course, became a superstar playing Dr. Christina Yang for 10 seasons on the television phenomenon, Gray's Anatomy, before moving on and winning that Golden Globe, the acclaimed series, Killing Eve. So today we find Sandra in London where she is shooting the fourth season of Killing Eve. We're meeting over Zoom.

I am back above my garage. We've gotten away from that. Thank goodness now that the COVID restrictions have dropped a little bit, we can do many of these interviews in person. But because she's traveling and shooting in London, we are over Zoom. A great conversation nevertheless about her career. She is the child of Korean immigrants. She grew up in Canada. Her parents did not love her decision.

to become an actor. They wanted her to do something more practical. She explains what that was like, that tension, and then celebrating with her and her parents as her career took off. First, really got noticed in a couple of films, namely Sideways, the Oscar-winning movie from 2004, then of course Gray's Anatomy, Killing Eve, and her new series on Netflix called The Chair, where she plays the new chair of the English department at a stuffy university. the role of Trailblazer, something she has done in real life many times over. So please enjoy right now a great conversation with Sandra O on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Sandra, thanks so much for doing this. It's great to see you. Hi, Willie. Great to be with you. I'm very anxious to talk about the chair.

I told you I just got to see the first two episodes. Before we do that, though, I want to wish you a very happy milestone birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. You had an amazing post where you stopped and sort of took stock of your life and career and thank just about everybody you could think of and recalled all these great shows that have made your career what it is. Yes, you know, I'm not a big poster, but I woke up early that morning and my mom had already texted me. And she's like, basically, we're going to tell you my I said, eight o'clock in the morning. And I'm like, okay. And so I spoke with my parents. First thing in the morning, I woke up and I basically spoke with my parents.

And I decided to post. And again, I'm not a big poster. I just, it's a wonderful, like, milestone birthdays are wonderful times to take stock of things. And I just wanted, I was really thinking about, you know, my friendships and my family and actually my work. And I just really wanted to thank everybody, you know. It's a great immediate way to send out a message. It was great to do, yeah. Is it overwhelming in some ways to stop at this point?

Say, oh, because you are moving so fast in your life and your career to stop. To say, oh, wow. Look at all the things I've done in these years. You know, actually doing stuff like this of speaking to people who will ask me questions like this, those are the moments that I actually have to stop and go, oh, what have I been doing? what have I been trying to make because people will put things into perspectives that I have not thought of.

And it's a really good checkup. You know, it's a really good checkup because, you know, I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about it in those terms, but I think it's a good checkup. So thank you. Well, you've got something great to celebrate with the chair, the new series on Netflix.

Explain for people we're thinking about watching it sort of the plot and also what about this great character drew you in. Sure. So the chair is a dromedy, and it's kind of like a workplace comedy that's set in academia. So I play the role of June Kim, Professor Kim, who's just been the newly minted chair in the English department at a Pembroke University's a fictitious university. And it's centered around a transgressive act that one of the fellow professors, Bill Dobson, played by Jay DuPlaas, does in class. And it's then navigating as the chair how to manage the fallout from a very ill-of-form mistake and how to keep the department, the English department, and in like the humanities relevant. But it also touches on so many things, like, you know, without even, without being pointed at it.

It's like what it is to be a woman and a person of color who enters into a leadership role who's trying to change a very antiquated and patriarchal white system. You know what I mean? How she relates to her students and to her coworkers, how she relates to her elderly father, how she relates to her adoptive daughter. So it was a great opportunity to play such a dynamic and full-fleshed role. and I give all the credit to Amanda Pete who created this world. As you say, she steps into this place that has been run forever by old white guys. And in many cases, these are cartoonish old white guys, kind of fumbling around, hanging on to their tenure.

Could you dig into some personal experience as a woman of color who stepped into these prominent roles and roles of leadership and sort of understand what she was going through? Sure. And I'll also try and frame also that hopefully Hopefully no one is a caricature in this piece. So even though you have, you know, older white professors, male professors, one, you know, the brilliant Bob Balaban who plays Professor Elliot Rance, hopefully you're seeing his perspective on the effect of

of being the older generation and perhaps not have. paid enough close attention to what the students want and how they need to learn. So I'll just start with that. And then the next part of your question, which is like, do I know what it's like? Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I think that has got to have informed how I approach, you know, Jeune. I can't exactly specifically point to what.

But one of the things that I feel like I have learned in my career, that is a little bit ahead of Professor Kim is that change is slow when you are an individual facing an institution. And for me, not to lose heart because you're, because for anyone who knows who has tried to enact change, it's never the way that you think it's going to happen. Right. And the challenges are there for you to only get more specific and deeper into your commitment to change. And you just see Professor Kim just trying to balance all these things at once. And so you have a real good balance of comedy and pathos. And I should say, to apropos, your first part of the answer,

the cartooners, old guys are just small group of guys fumbling around. cocktail parties. But Bob Balaband and the professors, obviously you're coming from a point of view of the world is changing. This is sort of our last stand to push back against that and you're sort of having to manage them while you try to push things forward. So I was also really interested to see, and I didn't think about this, and it was great to hear you say it, Dr. Kim's name, which as an Asian woman, you say, as an American woman, you say, that was really important that her name was authentically Korean. Can you explain that a little bit? Sure. It's like I can trace, I feel like, how Hollywood has progressed or widened. You know, when I was on Grey's Anatomy for 10 years

as Christina Yang, uh, it was the Obama years. And specifically, the show never addressed people's ethnicity, nor did it really kind of address people's home lives. It just was the style of the show. So I never got to really necessarily explore what other parts of Christina was. And then with the show, Killing Eve, I was able to bring a certain aspect of Eve's cultural heritage in the third. season. But that's what the show is not really about that. It's the show is really about the exploration of and the discovery of a woman's own psyche. But in the chair, when I first opened that first page of the pilot and I saw that Dr. Kim's name is Jean Kim. I just noted it

in terms of the growth of my own career that now I can I can play a character. who specifically has a Korean name and all the characters are going to call her that name correctly. And it was significant to me. I think there's been a lot of accommodation or denial or just not existence of the fact that people have, in their names, their ethnicity is in their names. So it was just great to.

It was great to see, and it was really important to me. It feels like this fits into something you've been thinking about in your recent roles, which is to give authentic Asian experiences in the parts you take and in your performance as different, as you say, from something like Gray's anatomy, which just sort of fit into the plot. You can sort of tell more of the story, and I feel like we see that in the chair when she goes home and her father lives with her, and we see symbols of religion on the wall, which you've talked about in your own childhood. So what does it mean to you personally to be able to have that power in Hollywood to say this is how the role is going to be?

This is how I'm going to play that. Well, it's definitely not as, let's say, cut and dry in that way. Because for me, it's more like finding the right collaborators. Finding, because I am, I'm not a writer at this point in my life. You know what I mean? But I'm not. I never want to limit myself. But it's about trying to find the world.

and the voices that I am interested in inhabiting and collaborating with. So, you know, Amanda set the whole world. This was always going to be a part of it. Dr. Kim was always going to be taking care of an elderly parent, and she was always going to be taking care of an adoptive daughter. So no matter what, you get to open up a lot of story dynamic with that. And that was also one of the things that really, really interest me. And it interests me because Amanda thinks that way.

And this is the show that she wanted to do. So I will gravitate towards that. I'm not gravitating towards things that don't interest me. You know what I mean? So people who are creating work that are creating work with what I believe is a wider scope, that's who I'm going to end up working with. And is there a lot more of that now, Sandra? Just by virtue of all the different outlets that we have for those shows,

added with a heightened consciousness and awareness that we need more of it? You know what? I think so. I'm almost afraid to say. You know what I mean? And anyone who's a person of color knows what I'm doing when I'm saying. I don't even want to say that it might be true, but it might be true. Because there is more openness to it, because there is more interest in it, what I hope develops alongside of it is a certain

type of patience and a certain type of support that comes in the form of development. You know, voices have to be developed. Do you know, if you suddenly want a storyline based on XYZ because you seem to think that the public wants it, you need to develop the voices to be able to take on those leadership roles to make that happen. Because ultimately, what it depends on is that the storytelling is interesting. authentic and true. You know what I mean? Because you can have whoever you want on camera. It doesn't matter. But if it's not interesting, if it is not truthful, I don't think people will watch it. I think that's probably right. And as you talk about bringing your own experience to roles like this,

I love reading the story of your own upbringing outside Ottawa where you really had to convince your parents that performance and acting was the thing for you. You were proven to be very very right. But what were those early years like when you said, mom and dad, I know you maybe don't get this, but this is what I want to do. You know, I'm one of those extremely lucky people who have a good relationship with their parents. And what I've learned from that experience, and obviously growing and maturing as a person, is that adversity is extremely important in the development of a person's character. And the time, you know, my parents are immigrants from South Korea, you know what I mean?

And in a very, very, very typical Korean-American immigrant kind of upbringing, just very middle of the road typical education and having a good job and security is very important. Anyone who's a child that an immigrant knows this. So my parents, it was very, very foreign, you know, the entertainment world or the artistic world. It was very, very foreign to them. But what I am so blessed with is that the way that they were an obstacle to me, it only makes you tougher in a good way. I've spoken about this before. It's like, you know, if you have the two most important people telling you that you shouldn't do it or that you can't do it, you, and you still do it anyway.

You do it anyway. You have a, you just built an internal confidence. And you can only build that by going through it. So when you are pounding the pavement, when people are saying, no, when you have self-doubt, you already have a certain layer of confidence because you've already surpassed, you know, the doubt of the two most important people to you. And then, you know, I was very lucky in my, in my career so far, you know, in the early days, I had success quite early. And I was able to show them very full pieces, you know, where the entire film was about my character.

I did this film early on by Mina Shum called Double Happiness. And it was about this character named Jade Lee, who wants to be an actress, is in a very typical Chinese-Canadian home. And it's a very simple coming of age story where she just eventually leaves home to pursue her dreams. When my parents saw that, my mom said to me, is this what you basically wanted to tell us? And I just felt so seen by her. Like she got it. I mean, my parents really eased off the gas pedal because I was fortunate enough to be able to show them my work. And they could understand that there's meaning in that work. And I think it's a little,

it's a little tricky and hard for immigrant parents, let's just say, to understand that if their child is an artist, just to not be afraid, even if they fail, or even if they're hungry and just eating pizza for three days, you know what I mean? That if you see your child that wants to be an artist in some sort of way, just to give them a little space to try it out. Knowing a little bit of that backstory that Jesus explained, the moment when you win the Golden Globe for Killing Eve, you get up there and they showed on the broadcast, I think before you even got to the microphone, your parents, and your dad stands up and breaks into applause and you're doing okay, and then you see them, you could see it sort of wash over you. What was that moment like

to see your parents who were skeptical at the outset, stand in the back and watch you receive this huge award and to watch their daughter be so successful at what she chose to do. You know, I have been shameless with my parents. I have brought them to so many awards. They're froze. They're really, really froze. But it's profoundly, profoundly satisfying that when you reach a certain type of milestone, and I would say that for me, it was hosting the show.

that your parents who support you so deeply are actually there in the audience. Yeah, it's profoundly satisfying to be able to come to a certain point in your career when in the moment that you're celebrated, that your parents get to witness it. I mean, you should ask them what they feel. I honestly, it's such a blur. You know, it's such a blur. But it was also really important. to me to be able to publicly thank them.

You know, and, you know, you don't, I mean, I'm honestly just doing it in, in the moment because my parents are there. But subsequently, I just, I, I, it was reflected back to me that I think that I meant a lot to, a lot of child, children of immigrants. and a lot of Asian American kids and just people to be able to express gratitude and love to their parents publicly. I don't think I have to ask them. I saw their faces that night. I think they were pretty proud. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Sandra O. Right after the break. Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my Sunday Sitdown podcast. Now more of My Conversation was Sandra O. So you talked about that early success in Canada and then you make the leap over to American television.

And you mentioned Arlis. I think most people point to Sideways as the breakout moment for you. Did it feel that way in real time when everyone said, oh, who's she? I like her. Let's put her in more stuff. You know, I think it was actually a timing thing because Sideways and Grace Anatomy happened at the same time. you know what I mean so those are those you know just mysterious times of like you know the stars are aligned and I think that did happen and you know working on sideways was one of the highlights of

my career it's I think it's a hold up it's been like a while now but I think it still holds up so that kind of like one two punch of like sideways and then gray's anatomy it was uh it was a a real a real shot out of the cannon um but I but I also I'm so happy that, you know, it happened in my early 30s. So I already had a career behind me and a fairly good amount of grounding to be able to receive what that meant to suddenly come into people's consciousness. And it kind of felt like it seems that with that sideways success, you said to yourself, I don't have to do the girlfriendy sidekicky thing. I can be front and center, be a central character. But, you know, I would frame it in the way of like, it's like I feel like when you make those

certain like leaps in your career, you change the point of view of what you're going to accept. And for me, it was not in the terms of I don't want to be. X, Y, Z. Right. It was very much like, I only want to play dynamic characters. I only want to play things that inspire me. And that's always a really challenging time to be able to move your career into a place of inspiration as opposed to of necessity.

So I was very lucky to be able to decide and start practicing that. And that's definitely when Grazen Anatomy came along. So Graze Anatomy comes along. You talk about being shot out of a canon. There's no bigger canon to be shot out of in terms of a show that was right in the cultural zeitgeist, the people were talking about the morning after all the time. What was it like in your life to be thrust onto that show, to have this big role on the biggest show on TV,

to have more and more people interested in your life, to know who you are, to say hello to you on the street. How did it change your life? Well, that's a big question. Big question. And I don't think that, I mean, I'm guessing that to be perfectly honest, it was traumatic. It's traumatic.

And the reason why I'm saying that is, I don't know whether it's just I come from a different generation or my temperament as an artist is that. is that you know that the best work or the work that you or the circumstances you need to do your work is with a lot of privacy. And that's just to find the authentic self. And so when one loses one's anonymity, you have to build skills to still try and be real. So I know this is probably not an answer. that people are particularly interested, but it is a truthful one. But having been in it,

I've grown to adapt and I've grown, it really forces you to grow internally, for at least for me, internally to be able to, I mean, I went from not being able to go out or not being able to go like hiding in restaurants or never looking out to then being able to receive and manage and manage projection, manage attention,

manage expectation, while not losing the sense of self. And that takes a little while to figure out. How do you do it, though? How do you do it when all the eyeballs in the restaurant are on you? How do you say, okay, this is my life. It's not normal, but it's my life. Here's how I'm going to manage it.

How did you make those adjustments? Because I've heard the same from other actors who've been shot out of a canon on a big show or a big movie and all of a sudden their life like that, the weekend the movie comes out is totally different. Well, have a good therapist. I'm not joking.

Important. Yeah. I'm not joking. It's very, very important because there's a lot that one would need to talk about, that you should not talk about with your partner or friends or family. Don't burden them with that. It's a very specific road.

And so one, have a good therapist. Hopefully you have a good support system of support network, you know? I am very lucky that I do have a very great. support system. And you just have to work at finding your way to stay grounded. And a lot of times that's by saying no.

You've done well with it, certainly. And from the question that always comes up when someone leaves a show like that is, okay, what do you do from there? What next? And here comes Killing Eve and you have this other great success, where as I said, you win another Golden Globe Award. What was it about that part that so attracted you and what makes that show so popular, people are so obsessed with it.

I don't know. I can tell you definitely wouldn't treat me. Was Phoebe Waller Bridge's tone? Yeah. Because I had not seen it before. And I knew it was fresh. Like, I really knew it was fresh right off the page. And I knew I could follow it. And I liked the circumstance where, you know, it's this.

kind of very middle of the road, middle of her life woman, and every woman who then develops an extremely dangerous and obsessive relationship with an assassin. Like, those are crazy circumstances. But what I could also see in the piece, which I was very interested in exploring, that it's about a woman's self-discovery. and that was ultimately what was so intriguing. And hopefully that element as well as a type of very exciting push-and-pull relationship between Eve and Villanelle is exciting to people. But mostly, I hope it is, is that you see these two women trying to figure out themselves,

by somehow needing to be in relationship with each other. And that was really interesting. That was really, really interesting to me. Like, how do you figure out how to be in relationship with a character that wants to kill you? Right. That's a big question. That's a big question. Well, part of the fun of the show is that you have a different woman writing every season.

So can you give us a little look ahead to season four of what your fans might expect? Well, I honestly, I am just in the middle. I'm here in London just in the middle of shooting the season four, the last season of Killing Eve. And I can tell you nothing. I knew it. I thought it might break you, Sandra. You know, we're really, really working hard to try and like really honor that relationship

and to find out what their, how their story. not ends, but somehow, somehow finishes at this moment. You know, that's what we're really working hard on, trying to find that way to service all those characters beautifully. Very diplomatic answer. It felt like you were giving something and you really weren't. You were such a pro, such a pro. Sandra, I really appreciate your time.

Congratulations on the chair. It's so fun to talk to you. I know you're busy working. so thanks for taking the time. Thank you so much. My big thanks again to Sandra for a great conversation over Zoom from London. You can catch her in the new series of The Chair streaming now on Netflix. And my thanks, as always, to all of you for tuning in again this week.

If you want to hear more of our conversations with my guests every week, be sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.