Getting to Know: Sandra Oh

As she's just had a birthday and is currently voicing Moxie in Smurfs, what better excuse can there be for getting to know Sandra Oh?

We say 'get to know', but Sandra Oh isn't one for sharing when it comes to her life away from the screen. She does take her art very seriously, however. That's how she became the first woman of Asian descent to win two Golden Globes and be nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

With 12 nods to her name, Oh is the most nominated Asian actor in Emmy history. But such accolades are the result of a considerable amount of hard work and the courage and determination to overcome the prejudices that still exist within the entertainment industry. As she explained while discussing her struggle to land leading roles because of her talent rather than her ethnicity, 'It takes a lifetime to free yourself from your own diminished sense of possibility.'

The Wizard of Woe

Sandra Miju Oh was born on 20 July 1971 in Nepean, Ontario. Her parents had come to Canada in the early 1960s, with father Oh Jun-su running his own shop, while mother Oh Young-nam was a biochemist. Older sister, Grace, and younger brother, Ray, have respectively gone on to become a Vancouver-based crown prosecutor and a medical geneticist in Boston. But Sandra knew she wanted to perform from the moment she was sent to ballet classes as a four year-old in a bid to correct her pigeon-toed stance.

Oh has described her childhood as 'a very, very typical Korean upbringing - lots of church, lots of golf'. She joked about her life in the Ottawa suburbs, 'Wherever Koreans are, they set up a church. There weren't many of us, maybe 10 families, so this was like a church in the basement of a church.' Much of her social life was based around the congregation. But Oh has always been aware of the sacrifices her parents made to give their offspring the best start in life. She told one interviewer, 'I think that's a part of when you grow up a child of immigrants. You see your parents work so hard. You know what you have, and you know what you don't have. And then you can also see what you want in your life and realise that you cannot bother people for that. You've got to go do it yourself.'

The first role she got for herself was The Wizard of Woe in a class musical at Knoxdale Public School entitled The Canada Goose. She was 10 and still dancing at Nepean's Les Petits Ballets. However, Oh knew that she was never going to become a ballerina. 'I didn't have it,' she later said, 'I wasn't talented enough.' She started keeping a journal around this time and was often brutally honest in her reflections. In her first-ever entry on 3 October 1982, she wrote: 'I hate myself. That's all. Oh yeah, I also think I'll commit sucicide [sic]. Nothing is worth living for. I'm no good at anything. I'm never happy anymore. I try so hard but I never succide [sic]. Mom and Dad always laugh at me when I try, I do stupid mistakes, Mom always yells at me. I have no self confidence. I don't believe in myself. I can't do anything. Someday I'll run real far, so far that no one will ever find me. I have a lot of thoughts but I can't write them all down. I hate myself.'

Oh shared this extract on stage during a Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival, where she revealed that she continues to chronicle her life to this day. It's a remarkable insight into someone who keeps such a tight control over information about herself (no one knows for sure, for example, who she is currently dating - if anyone). But it also says much about the experience of growing up as a Korean Canadian at a time when there were no role models in the media.

Fortunately, Oh came into her own at Sir Robert Borden High School, where she was elected student council president and led a campaign against styrofoam cups as the founder of the extra-curricular club, Borden Active Students For the Environment. When not playing the piano and flute, she also appeared in school plays and performed with the comedy troupe, Skit Row High, with whom she won the national championship at the Ottawa Improv Games. This success convinced the 15 year-old Oh to find an agent and start appearing in corporate videos, one of which warned about salmonella. Moreover, at the end of senior year, she defied her parents and turned down a four-year journalism scholarship at Carleton University in order to study drama at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montréal.

Speaking to Ellen DeGeneres in 2007, Oh explained, 'my parents at that time looked down on the arts...It's like one step above, you know, prostitution.' Jun-su and Young-nam had always instilled in their children a sense that 'whatever you have to do has to be good for society'. They had challenged their daughter, 'What's the good of being an actor on camera? You know, what are you helping society with?' But, though she still didn't know it, Sandra Oh was about to make a sizeable contribution to both her local community and society at large.

The Joy of Scratch Cards

Oh was 18 and still at college when she both appeared in Marc F. Voizard's Genie-nominated short, The Journey Home. and made her TV debut, as Gwen in Denim Blues (both 1989). However, she was helped at this early stage in her career by a diversity mandate across the Canadian entertainment industry. 'I ticked all their boxes,' Oh later divulged. 'You could always feel that you were the quota...But I benefited a lot and took it with the correct outlook, which is just that I'm going to gain as much experience as I can and I will transform it in the way I want to transform it.'

She got her chance more rapidly than she could ever have anticipated. While browsing through a magazine, her sister spotted an advertisement seeking a young Asian actress for a major TV production. This turned out to be The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1994), a biopic about the novelist-cum-poet's time as a 14 year-old drug-addicted prostitute. Following a seven-hour bus ride from Montréal to Toronto, Oh had slept at the depot before her audition, to which she wore a t-shirt and baggy overalls. Director Sturla Gunnarsson recalled being hugely impressed by what happened next. 'She asked for a moment to focus herself,' he said. 'Then she lay on the floor for five minutes. Most people would have kicked her out of the room. I thought it was remarkable that at 19 she had the confidence - and audacity to do that.' Having beaten a thousand other hopefuls to the role and won a Gemini Award, Oh looked back on the project with pride. 'I really admire who that person was at that moment who just said, "I don't know what the rules are. I'm going to lie down." That person took her time and was unapologetic about it.'

Shortly after graduating from the National Theatre School in 1993, Oh starred in a London, Ontario stage production of David Mamet's Oleanna, which would be filmed the following year with Debra Eisenstadt in the lead. While making The Diary of Evelyn Lau, Oh had become friends with actress and aspiring director Mina Shum. They went to see Wayne Wang's adaptation of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1993), which centred on four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. Shum remembers them sobbing during the film, as 'it was the only film either of us had seen that reflected where we came from. Seeing our stories reflected, seeing strong women that looked like us - we bawled our eyes out.'

Vowing to make a feature that reflected their own reality, the pair collaborated on Double Happiness (1994), in which Oh played Jade Li, a Chinese Canadian who risks being ostracised from her family for following her ambition to act. In addition to winning the Special Jury Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, the drama also earned Oh the Genie Award for Best Actress. However, this counted for little when she relocated to Los Angeles after having taken an uncredited bit in Stephen Surjik's Little Criminals (1995).

One particular meeting with a prospective agent stuck in Oh's mind. Having blurted out that she would never be leading lady material, the woman had suggested that Oh had plastic surgery. As Oh recalled: 'It was the way that she said, "Listen: I'm not going to lie to you. A lot of people are going to lie to you. But I've got nothing for you here. I have Suzy Kim" - I'm just making up names - "she has an audition in like six months. There's nothing for a year. My best advice for you is to go back home and get famous."'

A stunned Oh told herself, 'I had already done all I could do to get to that A level, which is star in theatre, TV, film, and somehow, that wasn't enough for someone to say, "I believe I can get you an audition."' She told an interviewer, 'There's like a dark needle or a nail that lives at the back of all of our heads, and that's your fear. That's like, "It is true. There's nothing there. And she's saying that she's not going to lie to me. Other people are going to lie to you, but she won't lie to you. She told the truth. Go back."' But the lady was not for turning and she was rewarded with the role of Bernice Schimmel, the art gallery publicity manager, opposite Rowan Atkinson in Mel Smith's Bean. She also took an unnamed bit part in Craig Baxley's Under Pressure (aka Bad Day on the Block, both 1997), which starred Charlie Sheen.

Then, her luck changed. Oh remembered, 'I really didn't have to eat much. I could survive on, like, a piece of pizza and a sweet potato. I really could, literally. But I won a lottery, and that saved me, and I was able to pay my rent. I was living in a tiny apartment. I didn't have rent. It was a bingo scratch-off. I won five thousand dollars.' Returning to Canada, Oh was cast alongside writer-director Don McKellar in Last Night and won another Genie for her performance as Sandra, who befriends a stranger while trying to get home to her husband (David Cronenberg) before the end of the world. The pair also appeared as Madame Ming and Evan Williams in the 'Montréal' episode of François Girard's The Red Violin. However, Oh returned to Hollywood with a bump, as she was cast as an unnamed friend in David Veloz's Jerry Stahl biopic, Permanent Midnight (all 1998), which starred Ben Stiller, Maria Bello, Owen Wilson, and Elizabeth Hurley.

Having found herself down the cast list as Cindy in Audrey Wells's directorial debut, Guinevere (1999), Oh played stripper Jasmine Bulut in Michael Radford's Dancing at the Blue Iguana and Kim in Keith Gordon's haunting psychological mystery, Waking the Dead (both 2000), which starred Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. In Garry Marshall's The Princess Diaries (2001), Oh stole focus from Anne Hathaway's Mia Thermopolis as Geraldine Gupta, the Vice-Principal of Grove High School. She also held her own against Frankie Munoz and Amanda Byers as eighth grade English teacher, Phyllis Caldwell, in Shawn Levy's Big Fat Liar, which she followed with a bit as the fourth fired employee in Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal (both 2002).

The same year brought a reunion with Mina Shum, as Oh played Kin Ho Lum, whose financial and romantic disasters prompt 12 year-old daughter, Mindy (Valerie Tian), to conduct a Taoist experiment in Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity. The film was little seen outside Canada. But Oh had been started to reach a satisfyingly large audience on the small screen, where her reputation would be forged.

Mercy Grace and MI5

Television had kept Oh busy during the lean times. She had also had stage engagements, but episodes in the likes of Cagney and Lacey, Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years, and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues had served as useful calling cards. In 1996, she was cast as Rita Wu, the assistant to Los Angeles sporting agent Arliss Michaels (Robert Wuhl) in Arli$$, which would run for 80 episodes over seven seasons to 2002. Inspired by Donald Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, the series featured lots of stellar guests and influenced several other shows with its willingness to tackle thorny sporting and social issues.

The bespectacled Rita was sparky, witty, and resourceful in bailing out her boss from tricky situations. Oh's performance (which was notable for her skill with both visual and verbal comedy) led to her being offered guest slots in Further Tales of the City, Six Feet Under, and Judging Amy. More importantly, it earned her an NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and brought her to the attention of Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy (2005-), who cast Oh in the role that would make her name, Cristina Yang, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S.

Oh had auditioned for the role of resident Miranda Bailey, but this went to Chandra Wilson, who found herself supervising Yang and her fellow surgical interns, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), and George O'Malley (T. R. Knight). Known for her ruthless ambition, irascibility, and lack of tact, Dr Yang still had romantic entanglements with Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington), Colin Marlowe (Roger Rees), and Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), with the first and third respectively ending on a wedding day and in divorce. However, she came to value her colleagues and famously called Meredith, 'my person', while explaining the closeness of their bond.

The show was often gruelling work, with long days over 10 months of the year. But the main stars were reportedly on $350,000 an episode. What's more, in addition to earning Oh a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2006, Grey's Anatomy also brought her five consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actress, although she never prevailed. Yet, after 10 seasons and 220 episodes, she decided to leave Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital because, 'I really felt like I'd done all I could do in a deeply creative way with that character, and it was just time.'

However, Oh was also a bit frustrated that the showrunners had kept overlooking Cristina's race and ethnicity. 'I would pitch jokes and story lines with my character,' she later revealed, 'and Sara Ramirez's character [Dr Callie Torres] because it's, like, let's get some colour in it. It was just not the tone of the show at that time. There were little bits of it, like Tsai Chin came on as my mom, and Diahann Carroll came on as Isaiah Washington's mom. And there were huge things you could do within the Black community and the Asian community, but those were just not storylines that the show was interested in pursuing. I knew it was just not the time to do it.'

Oh did get to discuss issues that mattered to her as part of the ensemble assembled for The People Speak, a 2009 documentary based on the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans that historian Howard Zinn had curated for his book, A People's History of the United States. She also got a chance to work on an English accent in order to play Sarah Chen opposite David Morrissey in Thorne: Scaredycat (2010), which was adapted from the bestselling crime novels by Kevin Billingham.

Although Oh never watched Grey's Anatomy, she has admitted to being a devotee of The Simpsons (1989-). She has yet to be invited on to the show, but she has voiced characters in American Dad!, American Dragon: Jake Long, Handy Manny, Phineas and Ferb, Robot Chicken, Peg + Cat, The Magic School Bus Rides Again, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.

As we'll see below, Oh was also in demand for film roles. But she was prepared to wait for the right television project to come along. She told Harper's Bazaar, 'The point when I decided to leave Grey's and the time since then has been extremely creative - not necessarily regarding output, but exploring the empowered place of waiting. It's like, "I'm going to wait. I'm going to say no. I'm going to wait," because I am able and privileged at this point in my life and in my career to make choices.' She cropped up in six episodes of the web comedy, Shitty Boyfriends (2015), and did four shows as Abby Tanaka in American Crime (2017). But the waiting game paid off, as Oh landed another choice role - although she had no idea what it was when she first read the script of Killing Eve (2018-22), which had been adapted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (of Fleabag fame) from the crime novellas of Luke Jennings.

As she was so used to being cast in supporting roles, Oh had skimmed through the script looking for what had become her kind of character. Eventually, she called agent Nancy Gates and asked why she was reading the story when she didn't appear to be in it. When she asked who she was meant to be playing, she was astonished to learn that the BBC wanted her for the title role. 'It was a real awakening moment for me,' Oh later revealed. 'I couldn't figure it out.' She continued, 'I just felt so exposed. In that moment, I realised I had been in that belief for so long that I didn't even bother looking for it.'

Eve Polastri has a dull desk job at MI5 and a cosy marriage to Niko (Owen McDonnell), a maths teacher who enjoys a game of bridge. When a Russian politician is assassinated, however, Eve suggests that the killer is a woman and she is assigned the task of heading an MI6 unit to track down Villanelle (Jodie Comer), who works for a secret organisation known as The Twelve.

Over the four series, the women become obsessed with each other and are forced to join forces when they are each targeted during an excursion to Rome. Even when they walk away from their professional lives, they are drawn together in order to break the hold that The Twelve exerts over them. It makes for heady viewing, as Oh and Comer are such compelling performers, while the twisting teleplay makes it impossible to guess what's going to happen next.

Oh enjoyed playing Eve because she had none of the traits that had made James Bond so indestructible and her displays of dogged guilessness resulted in Oh becoming the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She missed out to Claire Foy for The Crown (2016-23), but did win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Drama, thus becoming the first woman from an Asian background to win two Golden Globes. The following year, she claimed the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series. But, while Oh was now established as a small-screen icon, she had yet to find her niche in cinema.

Filming When Free

Working on Arli$$ and Grey's Anatomy had left Oh with little time for film work. However, she continued to amass credits, essaying an uncredited craps player opposite gambling Toronto bank manager Philip Seymour Hoffmann in Richard Kwietniowski's Owning Mahowny, and appearing as Michelle alongside Bill Pullman's blinkered careerist in Curtiss Clayton's Rick, which as based on Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Rigoletto. Her highest profile outing in 2003, however, cast her as Diane Lane's best friend, Patti, who is expecting a baby with partner Grace (Kate Walsh), in Audrey Wells's adaptation of Frances Mayes's bestseller, Under the Tuscan Sun.

Having returned north to play Carol French, the estate agent who stops video store owner James Allodi from gassing himself on a small island in the Canadian Maritimes in Daniel MacIvor's Wilby Wonderful, Oh voiced Ting Ting, one of the three princesses being escorted across China to their weddings in Darrell Rooney and Lynne Southerland's Mulan II, which followed on from the 1998 Disney classic, Mulan. By this time, Oh herself had got married and husband Alexander Payne gave her an eye-catching part in Sideways (all 2004), as Stephanie the wine pourer breaks the nose of fading actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) with her motorbike helmet after she discovers that he is about to marry another woman.

Payne had told Oh to 'tap into all that Korean female rage' and she later remarked, 'I think it's because it was true - I was tapping into a certain kind of rage, of a woman betrayed. And the fantasy that people have of being able to beat up the person who betrayed them.' Sadly, however, the marriage didn't last and Oh and Payne parted company in 2005 before divorcing the following year.

As Cinema Paradiso users will see, this was a particularly busy period film-wise, as Oh first took on the role of nosy neighbour Judy Tokuda in David Slade's Hard Candy, which follows the efforts of 14 year-old Hayley Stark (Elliot Page) to expose thirtysomething predator Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson). She then cropped up as Young Turk in Monika Mitchell's Break a Leg, a thriller about an actor willing to go to any lengths to get a part, before playing Lulu, the latest in a line of quirky gal pals, opposite perennial bridesmaid Heather Graham in Nisha Ganatra's Cake (all 2005).

The role of Mary proved more demanding, as she joins fellow nuns, Clara (Chloë Sevigny) and Hilde (Olympia Dukakis), in nursing South Africans living with AIDS in Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles, which also includes episodes set in China and Canada. Next up, Oh was seen in Jeff Stanzler's Sorry, Haters (all 2005), as Phyllis Magintyre, a colleague at a minor New York TV station of Robin Wright Penn, who has befriended Syrian taxi driver Abdellatif Kechiche in the aftermath of 9/11.

In addition to these features, Oh also made a couple of shorts. But Cristina Yang required much of her creative energy for the rest of the decade, even though she did take on the occasional big-screen venture. In Patrick Stettner's The Night Listener, she was Anna, the personal assistant of Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams), a gay late night DJ on a New York radio station. But she only had time to pop up as a marketeer in Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration (both 2006), which centres on a group of actors who begin to believe the hype when the film they're working on begins to attract awards buzz. The following year, her only non-Grey's credit was as Doofah, a yellow-bellied dinosaur in Jamie Mitchell's The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends (2007).

More voiceover work followed, as Oh played Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Michael Madsen's Sam Spade in a Grammy-nominated audiobok dramatisation of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (which has been filmed by John Huston in 1941, with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in the roles). But Oh's only film appearance of 2008 came as the Minister of Health in Fernando Meirelles's Blindness, an adaptation of a José Saramango novel about an epidemic that afflicts everyone except Julianne Moore, the wife of doctor Mark Ruffalo. And, rounding off the decade, Oh played Dr Park, the psychiatrist quizzing Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) about his conviction that he's a superheroic vigilante out to confound an evil villain in Peter Stebbings's comedy Defendor (2009).

Blazing a Trail

Such were her commitments on Grey's Anatomy that Oh only made three films in her final few years on the show and they all came in 2010. Having voiced Gal 2000 in Kloor and Dan St Piere's animated infomentary, Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, she played Mrs Meacham, the no-nonsense third grade teacher at Glenwood Elementary School in Elizabeth Allen's Ramona and Beezus, which was adapted from Beverly Cleary's novel series and paired Joey King and Selena Gomez as Ramona Geraldine Quimby and her older sister, Beatrice Ann, who is known within the family as 'Beezus'.

David Lindsay-Abaire adapted his own acclaimed play for John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole (2010), in which Oh excelled as Gabby, the member of a bereavement therapy group who has a moment with Howie (Aaron Eckhart) that stops short of a fling because he still loves grieving wife, Becca (Nicole Kidman). But four years were to pass before Oh turned up as Susanne, the wife of Lenore (Kathy Bates), who is the cousin of Pearl Balzen (Susan Sarandon), who has hit the road with her granddaughter (Melissa McCarthy) in Ben Falcone's Tammy (2014). She got off lightly, however, as McCarthy and Sarandon were nominated for Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzies.

Oh turned producer in collaboration with Canadian animator, Ann Marie Fleming, on Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming. She also voiced the title character, who learns about her father's past when she gets to attend a poetry festival in his native Iran. More voice work followed in 2016, as Oh played Four-Eyed Frankie in the English dub of Jean-François Pouliot's Cleo (aka Snowtime!), a CGI remake of André Mélançon's Canadian kids classic, The Dog Who Stopped the War (1984).

Dotted among the animations and TV episodes, Oh demonstrated her gift for physical comedy in Onur Tukel's Catfight (2016), which sees wealthy alcoholic Veronica Salt embark upon a violent rivalry with her former college friend, Ashley Miller (Anne Heche), who is now an aspiring artist. This is often far from subtle and some may take exception to the depiction of two women seeking to punch each other's lights out. But the leads wouldn't have touched this if it had been a tacky piece of exploitation and the brutal knockabout should leave viewers with plenty to think about regarding women's place in modern society.

In some ways, this proved the perfect warm-up for Killing Eve, which kept Oh so busy that she only managed to reunite with Mina Shum on Meditation Park (2017), in which she plays Ava, the Vancouver mother of two who tries to keep her sixtysomething Chinese parents, Maria (Cheng Pei-pei and Bing (Tzi Ma), together, while repairing their relationship with her estranged brother.

Voiceovers have been a regular source of income durng Oh's later career. She played Mrs Zhong in Glen Keane's Over the Moon (2020), the story of a young girl and her faithful bunny that was scripted by Audrey Wells. Disney came calling again with the part of Virana, the chieftess of Fang and the mother of Namaari (Gemm Chan), in Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada's Raya and the Last Dragon, which stars Kelly Marie Tran as the warrior princess and Akwafina as Sisu.

Oh remained on maternal duty, as the strict Ming Lee keeping an eye on her shape-shifting 13 year-old daughter, Meilin (Rosalie Chiang), in Domee Shi's Pixar panda allegory, Turning Red (2022). Like lots of other performers, however, Oh had to endure a period of inactivity during the Coronavirus pandemic, which inspired Peter Hedges's The Same Storm (2021), a snapshot of Covid society in which Oh's Grace Park was one of 24 characters.

The same year saw Oh play academic Kim Ji-Yoon in The Chair (2021), a Netflix series set at Pembroke University. Having got a taste for executive producing on Killing Eve, Oh took her first feature credit on Iris K. Shim's horror, Umma (2022), in which a single mother named Amanda is haunted by the ghost of her own mother at a remote farm.

Frustratingly, none of these titles is available on disc. But Cinema Paradiso users can see Oh guest as The Prophet in The Sandman, a series co-created by Neil Gaiman that stars Tom Sturridge as the Master of Dreams. Also in 2022, she narrated Rising Against Asian Hate: One Day in March, a documentary about the prejudice and violence that people of Asian descent experience in the United States. She also guested in Invincible: Atom Eve (2022) as Debbie Grayson, who is the wife of Nolan and the mother of Mark, who are better known by their superhero monikers, Omni-Man and Invincible. In addition to this prequel, Oh has also featured in 24 episodes of the main series. She would also voice Mistral in Raman Hui's The Tiger's Apprentice (2024) and Moxie, the daughter of Ken (Nick Offerman) and the leader of the International Neighbourhood Watch Smurfs, whose headquarters are hidden inside a disco ball in Chris Miller's Smurfs (2025).

On the live action front, Oh teamed to excellent comic effect with Akwafina, as sisters Jenny and Anne Yum, in Jessica Yu's Quiz Lady (2023), which really should be on disc. Maybe it will show up eventually, along with Ann Marie Fleming's Can I Get a Witness (2024), an ambitious blend of live action and animation that sees Oh play Ellie in an overpopulated world in which people over 50 have to submit to statutory euthanasia. In the meantime we can look forward to Aziz Ansari's Good Fortune (2025), which will see Oh's Martha remove the wings of guardian angel, Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), after he body swaps the impoverished Arj (Ansari) with the wealthy Jeff (Seth Rogen) in a bid to prove that money doesn't buy happiness.

Oh has reportedly joined the cast of Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's short story collection, Stone Mattress. But also expect her to keep signing up to projects that reflect upon the Asian American experience, such as The Sympathizer (2024), HBO's adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Vietnamese refugees, which saw Oh play Sofia Mori in a mini-series that was created by South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and Oh's longtime Canadian collaborator, Don McKellar.

In 2019, Oh became the first Asian to host the Golden Globes. She was also up for an award at the 76th ceremony and co-host, Andy Samberg, informed the 19 million-strong TV audience that he had a contingency plan in case Oh was disappointed. 'I'm going to make you a crappy little tinfoil fake Globe,' he said, 'just in case you don't win, and I'm going to bring it out and give it to you and be like, "You're always a winner to me!"' Time magazine seemed to agree with him, as it made Oh one of its annual 100 most influential people in the world. Six years on, we think Sandra Oh's commitment to shifting the dial and supporting emerging voices makes her one of the most significant trailblazers currently working in American entertainment and we hope she long remains so.