Sandra Oh says working on 'Grey's Anatomy' was 'traumatic'
- By Web Desk -
- Aug 30, 2021
Sandra Oh, who starred as Cristina Yang on the hit show Grey’s Anatomy, has called her experience of working on the series ‘traumatic’.
In a recent Sunday Today interview, Sandra opened up about her time on the mega-hit series that gave her a 10-year-long, Golden Globe-winning role as Yang, reflecting back at some off-screen emotional turmoil that came with it.
Talking about starring in such a successful show, Sandra said, “To be perfectly honest, it was traumatic,” explaining how difficult it was to maintain anonymity and “build skills to still be real.”
She went on to add that over time, it was easier for her to stop hiding in public places, and that she instead “learned to manage attention, manage expectation, while not losing the sense of self.”
Highlighting just how important having a good therapist was to her mental health, Sandra said, “It’s very, very important. You just have to work at finding your way to stay grounded. And a lot of times, that’s by saying no.”
The Canadian star, who has had a hugely popular turn as Eve Polastri in Killing Eve recently and will now be seen in Netflix’s The Chair as Ji-Yoon Kim, the English department chair at a prestigious university, also feels that Hollywood has progressed since her time on Grey’s Anatomy.
“When I was on Grey’s Anatomy for 10 years, the show never addressed people’s ethnicity. With the show Killing Eve, I was able to bring a certain aspect of Eve’s cultural heritage. But in The Chair, when I saw that Dr. Kim’s name is Ji-Yoon Kim, now I can play a character who specifically has a Korean name. And all the characters are going to call her that name correctly,” she explained.
This isn’t the first time that Sandra has opened up about her career-defining time on Grey’s. In 2014, she told The Hollywood Reporter, “I remember talking to our script supervisor about the tough years… where a lot of us don’t remember what happened, honestly, because we were so exhausted. I cannot express to you the profundity of this exhaustion, but what I feel now, being able to zoom out and have a bit more space, was in the state of exhaustion, I feel like I was more reactive than I wish I would have been.”