Everyone most likely knows Sandra Oh as Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy, but since her departure from the show four years ago (can you believe it’s been that long?) Sandra Oh has been up to A LOT.
In a recent interview with Vulture, Oh talked about her career, her next project Killing Eve, and racism in the entertainment industry.
The Korean-Canadian actress has over and over again proved her acting chops through the twists and turns on Grey’s, but Vulture asked what took her so long to find a new project where she would be playing the lead role. The former Grey‘s star responded by talking about the lack of representation for people of color in the entertainment industry, and the heartbreaking moment when she assumed she was reading for a supporting role rather than the lead in Killing Eve.
Oh explained that when she read the script she was on the phone with her agent, and she had no idea that the role she was reading for was the lead. “In that moment, I did not assume the offer was for Eve. I think about that moment a lot. Of just going, how deep have I internalized this? [So] many years of being seen [a certain way], it deeply, deeply, deeply affects us.”
After so many years of seeing such an absence of women of color in major TV roles, she says she was “brainwashed” into thinking she wasn’t capable of a lead role.
Oh believes that the reason people of color never see themselves as the heroes in their own stories is because that’s never what happens on television or in the movies. “You know what, not only is shit hard, it’s extremely unfair. And racism exists. Let’s start there. I felt it, and I have felt it deeply. And I’m extremely fortunate. So I’m not going to not say that it’s not there, because it is” she said.
The truth is there’s a great divide when it comes to the representation of people of color in the entertainment industry, but Sandra Oh is definitely on her way to help change that.