Killing Eve star Sandra Oh can’t wait for the challenge of treading the boards as she prepares for her London theatre debut, in The Misanthrope at the National Theatre in London
Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve star Sandra Oh, 54, has returned to theatre several times during her acclaimed film and TV career, but her role in The Misanthrope at the National Theatre will be her first in the UK. She says of rehearsals: “It feels terrible because you’re trying things for the first time and you’re just standing there and you’re like: ‘I don’t know how to move my arms.’ Or it’s like: ‘I just have egg on my face,’ or I’m looking at someone and I completely go blank. But these are the things that you kind of have to go through to craft the play and craft a character.”
And speaking from the heart, she adds: “You gotta do plays. Nothing beats being on stage for me.” The Misanthrope was written by Moliere in the 17th century but this adaptation, by Martin Crimp, flips the gender of the main character Alceste – turning him into Sandra’s Alice. Like her Killing Eve character, MI6 officer Eve Polastri, Alice is not afraid to speak her mind. And, like Eve, her anarchic streak gets her into trouble.
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Sandra says of the new script: “We’re only in the second week of rehearsal, and so how that will kind of translate in a larger sense, I’m not exactly sure how, but it’s a great thrill.” She admits she is drawn to Alice’s brutal honesty, saying: “I have been very fortunate in playing very strong female characters. You know, what Alice is kind of pointing to with all the rage that I think many of us have, it’s a great opportunity to kind of be a truth teller.”
But the more Alice speaks her mind, the more trouble she brings upon herself as her personal relationships and career fracture under an intense backlash. Sandra’s excitement for the role gathers momentum as she speaks. She says: “I can’t wait to get up on stage. You know what I mean? There’s something that I love [about] being an actor. The process of also being in rehearsal, it’s such a sacred space. You really get to try things. That’s the time that you are really exercising your instinct and who you are to the utmost.”
Sandra, who has spoken about her need to “be afraid of something in the character” she plays, with Eve Polastri appealing because of “her darkness, her insecurity,” has also said she likes theatre as it feeds into her need to “try things that mostly scare me.”
Born near Ottawa in Canada to a biochemist mother and entrepreneur father – both Korean immigrants – Sandra’s performances in Killing Eve and as Dr Cristina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy made her the first Asian woman to win multiple Golden Globes.
After a spell pursuing ballet, she shocked her parents by choosing to go to the National Theatre School in Montreal rather than university. A childhood friend, Margo Purcell, remembers Sandra’s acting in a school musical: “She played the villain and you couldn’t take your eyes off her.” She adds: “When she walked on a stage, there was a light around her almost.”
Fiercely proud of her heritage, Sandra famously said at the Emmy Awards in 2018, when she was the first actress of Asian descent to be nominated for Best Actress: “It’s an honour just to be Asian” – words which are now seen on T-shirts.
And while her more mainstream roles have won her acclaim, she has consciously used her fame to promote work from the Asian diaspora – appearing, for example, in Domee Shi’s Pixar production, Turning Red, Jessica Yu’s family comedy Quiz Lady and Iris Shim’s horror film, Umma.
The first woman of Asian descent to host the Golden Globe Awards in 2019, the same year, she also became the first Asian-Canadian-American woman to host Saturday Night Live. In a speech at a Stop Asian Hate rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2021, in response to the Atlanta spa shootings, in which six of the eight people killed were women of Asian descent, she told the crowd: “I wanna hear you say, I am proud to be Asian! I belong here!”
So it is no surprise to see Sandra getting under the skin of a character who is not afraid to take a stand. She says: “I was going to say how fun Alice is to play. I mean, very rarely do you get to play a character where you can describe and say exactly what you mean.”
After meeting through mutual friends in Los Angeles in around 1999, Sandra – who is fiercely protective of her private life – dated filmmaker Alexander Payne, 65, and married him on New Year’s Day, 2003. She played wine enthusiast Stephanie in his acclaimed 2004 comedy-drama Sideways, alongside Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. But their marriage didn’t last and they separated in March 2005, before finalising their divorce in 2007.
Despite their split, she said of her ex-husband: “He’s a phenomenal director. He’s a great writer and he inspires everyone on set.” Sandra, who became a US citizen in 2018 and has homes in Los Angeles and Ontario, is now seeing Russian artist and photographer Lev Rukhin, who was born in the Soviet Union in the 1970s but grew up in Texas. They began appearing together in public in 2016 – attending a White House state dinner for then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and being pictured together in Rome when she was filming Killing Eve in 2018.
A practitioner of Vipassana, a form of Buddhist meditation, Sandra’s highly individual acting style may result from her interest in “creative dream work,” combining dream analysis with method acting. And she has certainly earned some dream roles.
*This interview has been adapted from The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service. The full broadcast is available on BBC Sounds.
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