Sandra Oh is looking to take on new roles that embrace her Asian heritage.
Oh is well known for her starring roles in Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve. Her performance in Killing Eve won her a nomination for the 2018 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She became the first actress of Asian decent to be nominated for an Emmy.
However, many of her notable roles do not explore the character’s racial identity.
In an interview for Elle Canada‘s June 2020 cover story, Oh said she is “specifically interested in roles that explore a character’s race.”
“But I’m in a place in my career now where I am specifically interested in roles that explore a character’s race,” Oh said. “Because I can—and because I want our conversations to eventually move to a place that recognizes that it’s important. Let’s say it’s a show about a fashion magazine and the editor’s Black. You can’t just write this character without having the background of who she is. But that has been the primary storytelling for as long as we’ve been around.”
Over the past few years, Oh has pushed for greater diversity in Hollywood. While hosting the Golden Globes in 2019, Oh took a moment to praise “the faces of change” present at the awards show, according to BBC.
“I said yes to the fear of being on this stage tonight because I wanted… to look out onto this audience and witness this moment of change,” Oh said in her opening monologue.
Oh told Elle Canada that portrayals of Asians on screen often make Asian Americans uncomfortable because they aren’t written properly.
“Asian-Americans, particularly from my generation, almost recoil if we hear an accent [onscreen] because of how laden in racism and misunderstanding [it is] and [how it’s a result of] not being in charge of the story,” she says.
Oh added in the interview that she is excited to see younger generations embrace their Asian identities by “carrying” their accents into their characters.
“If you are Korean-American and from Los Angeles, you have an accent, but they aren’t trying to flatten their accent, like I have,” she says. “They are just carrying that into the character of, say, a doctor. That’s how we get the shift. We don’t want to just have a person of colour acting the way a white person would act. Because they’re not!”
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