Earlier this year, Sandra Oh took the stage behind a speaker's stand at a diploma awarding in a New England location. She was there to offer recent graduates inspirational thoughts during a period of permacrisis. Stepping up to the challenge, she opened up about her own previous struggles with depression and worry, then made a genuine case for embracing discomfort and empathy. “So we can meet suffering again and again and not lose our decency,” she emphasized. This was especially crucial, she added, when many global figures “gain influence through fear and suppression.”
Then came the point that would capture global attention. She urged everyone to stand up and do something the Grey’s Anatomy role used to do when times got tough. “Shake it off!” she exhorted as an upbeat song filled the crowd. “Remember this feeling!”
“The anxiety was overwhelming about it,” Oh admits. “I prepared extensively.” She had been putting herself into the outlook of recent graduates not just anxious about their own paths but about the broader world. “Our planet is in crisis!” she says, considering their dark thoughts. “There’s wars all over! The weight is overwhelming, leading to endless scrolling.”
But, crucially, her intention was her listeners to find their way to positivity – hence the movement. “Sitting there trying to bear the pain,” she says, clearly capturing the outlook she shared that day, “assists in discovering how to exist meaningfully.”
There are now apparel emblazoned the statement she expressed at a major awards show: ‘I’m proud of my heritage’
The presentation – with its honesty and empathy, its awareness of the world’s cruelties while still finding moments of celebration – feels truly representative for Oh. Born near Ottawa to parents who emigrated from Korea, the performer, whose star turns in acclaimed programs made her the pioneering performer to win multiple industry accolades, has since built a following for her fierce support of increased diversity in the film and television.
Charming and energetic, Oh’s discussion is filled with plenty of lightness. “Hold on baby!” is the opening line heard as she speaks by phone from her current location, playing for time as she struggles briefly to activate her camera. But she soon becomes more thoughtful, often pausing for lengthy pauses as she explores everything from the planetary challenges to technology to racial equality.
Fittingly, her current work – an independent movie – is about seeking hope amid the crisis. After an world-ending, AI-engineered disaster hits Earth in the very deliberately chosen year of a coming time, civilization has been restructured. By a future date: harmony has been achieved. Corporate spaces, devices and smartphones are artifacts of a failed civilisation. People spend their days cultivating plants. But there are restrictions: they don’t travel, energy is controlled and – the main twist – everyone must undergo an official passing at midlife. She portrays a survivor the 2025 catastrophe, who is guiding her offspring into her new job as a “documenter” of these “end of life” ceremonies.
Where you seek affection is technology, something is happening to you at an deep level
“What captivated me was the script’s reflection on mortality,” says Oh, in particular how the knowledge of one’s future passing would change one’s approach to life. It’s an ever more pressing question, Oh says, recalling an initial showing last year while environmental emergencies raged across a urban area. It brought home the idea that the film is not really about the future. “We are living this presently,” she says. “Our world is already aflame.”
During the production of the project, she requested the filmmaker to include AI in the script. How does she think technology is changing our lives? “Phones and social media,” she says, “reshape our behavior. Once technology replaces human connection, something is happening to you at an fundamental level.”
The way she copes to this shift – “I’m already struggling, and it’s not native to me” – is choosing to do “intimate, deeply significant” projects such as this newest endeavor, as well as stage acting. She has been playing a theatrical part in an public venue in a famous urban park. “I connect with 2,000 people in an open-air theatre. You can feel people really desire to come to the show to enjoy themselves, be entertained, for it to be joyous, in the fresh air. You’re united and you’re sharing – through timeless narratives.” In the age of the machine, “authentic exchanges become increasingly essential.”
She frequently discusses making conscious choices, purposeful selections. “An advantage of experience,” says the actor, who has recently celebrated her mid-fifties. “There is so much in the world, that you’ve been accepting without thought. But you see that moment of clarity coming through – and realise that’s what you want to embrace. I think that’s what experience is about. And it’s very fulfilling.”
The performer has shared rejecting the prejudice she accepted from her formative time, singling out a painful memory with an agent when she arrived in a creative center in the mid-nineties. The advisor advised her to leave as there weren’t any opportunities for Asian actors there. Much later, on reading a pivotal project, Oh couldn’t work out which supporting part was intended for her. “Actually,” her representative said. “It’s the lead.”
More recently, the actress has focused her substantial platform into stories from the cultural background, participating in family features, thriller stories, and lighthearted stories. She’s also played varied roles in historical drama and academic series. All these roles, unlike the ones that made her famous, actively include her character’s background in the script.
“I remember being a prestigious event when a cultural touchstone swept the awards,” she says. “The moment mattered. To build something, you need a broad support network – to make an impact, to get the experience, to know how to help one another. When I started, performers like me – we’d been acquainted for ever, but we seldom worked together on a stage or set, because we were always on our own. It’s still a challenging field, leaning into, honestly, a {patriarchal white mainstream|traditional power structure|established
