{"id":648940,"date":"2026-06-20T12:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T12:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648940\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T12:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T12:53:09","slug":"how-do-i-deal-with-my-rage-i-put-it-in-everything-i-do-killing-eves-sandra-oh-on-fury-friendship-and-hitting-her-prime-in-midlife-sandra-oh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648940\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How do I deal with my rage? I put it in everything I do\u2019: Killing Eve\u2019s Sandra Oh on fury, friendship and hitting her prime in midlife | Sandra Oh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandra Oh bursts into a back room at the National Theatre<\/a> in London with wayward post-rehearsal energy. The 54-year-old, long one of the most stylish actors in Hollywood, is in brown linen, a herringbone jacket and hat and sunglasses, which she removes before collapsing into a chair and throwing her head forward, arms outstretched, hair splayed across the table. \u201cIt\u2019s just the fucking process of it,\u201d she groans. \u201cWe just finished our first stagger-through, which if anyone is an actor \u2013 it\u2019s early days, so the fact we made it through was great. It\u2019s brutal. We started in the Lyttelton, and it\u2019s interesting to be in that space and to hear verse. You can really hear it. It\u2019s not just about volume or speed. It\u2019s not even solely about intention. You learn so much just being in that space, but the big thing is \u2013 sorry.\u201d She catches herself. \u201cI\u2019m just marching on.\u201d And she bellows with laughter.<\/p>\n

Oh has been in London for just over a month rehearsing her role as Alice in a modern reimagining of Moli\u00e8re\u2019s Le Misanthrope. It\u2019s a happy return; eight years ago, she was in the capital to film the first of four series of the hit show Killing Eve<\/a>, which became a phenomenon and changed her life as an actor for ever. Oh played Eve Polastri, the shambolic but brilliant British intelligence agent, who, along with Jodi Comer\u2019s Villanelle, made for one of the best spy capers of recent years. Now, she is playing a novelist \u2013 gender-flipped from the 17th-century original, in an adaptation by Martin Crimp \u2013 who is fed up with the flattery and dishonesty of the people around her. It\u2019s a deliberate pivot to theatre; last summer, she appeared as Olivia in a starry production of Twelfth Night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, New York. In the autumn, she made her debut at New York\u2019s Metropolitan Opera in a production of Donizetti\u2019s comic opera La Fille du R\u00e9giment. Unlike the sometimes fraught me-me-meism of screen work, says Oh, working in theatre in general and at the National in particular \u201cis a collaborative thing\u201d \u2013 not least, she adds drily, because no one does it for the money. \u201cEveryone has to bring their best and most open selves. And everyone else loves watching everyone succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a dynamic that suits Oh in her current phase. In the last few years, she has become that rare figure in Hollywood, a famous woman who has only grown more powerful with age, a champion of younger performers and something of a truth-teller in an industry full of people encouraged by flattery to talk absolute rubbish. She is funny, shrewd, insightful and, above all, generous in her insights. A few years ago, in the New Yorker<\/a>, she spoke about surviving years of racism as a woman of Asian origin trying to get ahead as an actor. (On white male directors not casting her, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s like being able to get over a bad boyfriend. They\u2019re not going to call. Just move on and hang out with the young women who want you to be their mom.\u201d) Later, she described to the New York Times<\/a> a sense of being \u201cdeep into this very rich middle part of [my] life\u201d in which \u201conly now do [I] have enough strength and hopefully curiosity to go into the places of asking the question: why did I do that? Who has been steering the ship? Because now, in this back half of my life, I\u2019m the captain of the ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In the diaries Oh has been keeping since she was a child \u2013 extracts of which have appeared in papers and podcasts \u2013 one gets the sense of an introspective, literary person, with a deep connection to where she came from \u2013 the suburb of Ottawa, Canada, where Oh still has friends from grade school. If we loved her 20 years ago as Dr Cristina Yang in Grey\u2019s Anatomy \u2013 a blunt, brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon \u2013 these days Oh appears as a sage-like person very much in her prime, which, she tells me, she finds, \u201cincredibly liberating and also, like, enraging\u201d.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll get to that. A fortnight before I meet Oh at the theatre, I see her in a studio on the eve of the first week of rehearsals. As an actor gearing up to appear at the National for the first time, Oh had, a few weeks earlier, the amazing good fortune to run into Fiona Shaw at a grocery store in her LA neighbourhood, where her Killing Eve co-star happened to be living while filming. \u201cShe\u2019s one of the greatest stage actors of her generation and knows the National,\u201d says Oh. In the supermarket aisle and later, over breakfast at Oh\u2019s house, Shaw gave her a bunch of hacks about the stage at the Lyttelton. \u201cShe said, \u2018If you\u2019re going to be on this stage, look out for [the sight lines] in this area,\u2019 or, \u2018This is the strongest area on stage, do this technicality this way.\u2019 She was giving me the gold. I could not believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the studio that first day we meet, Oh is in a cropped leather jacket and soft leather shoes that are \u201cgood and supportive. I need structure.\u201d Don\u2019t we all, I say, and Oh cackles. In fact, while it\u2019s the structural and technical aspects of theatre work that she enjoys, it\u2019s TV that made Oh. Her jump to leading roles came relatively late. It\u2019s strange, these days, to stumble across Oh in old movies in parts that seem wildly too small for her \u2013 the other day, while watching the 2001 film The Princess Diaries with my kids, I was taken aback to see Oh as the cartoonish Vice Principal Gupta. Other credits from that period include \u201cfourth fired employee\u201d from something called Full Frontal and \u201cmarketing person\u201d from the movie For Your Consideration.<\/p>\n

Despite enjoying great, early success in TV in Canada and becoming a prominent ensemble player for nine years in Grey\u2019s Anatomy (2005-14), it wasn\u2019t until Killing Eve that she really ascended to leading role status. Famously, when her agent called her with the script for the show, Oh assumed she was to read for a minor character. \u201c\u2018So Nancy, I don\u2019t understand, what\u2019s the part?\u2019\u201d Oh recounted<\/a> saying to her agent at the time. \u201cAnd Nancy goes: \u2018Sweetheart, it\u2019s Eve, it\u2019s Eve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh with Ellen Pompeo in Grey\u2019s Anatomy, 2006 (above), and with Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, 2019 (below). Photograph: Michael Desmond\/five Photograph: Parisa Taghizadeh\/BBC\/Sid Gentledouble quotation markIsn\u2019t that just the question and the challenge of life? How do you deal with life not being fair, or\/and turning out the way you want?<\/p>\n

Oh as Eve was a revelation; by turns sardonic, baffled, excavating every nuance of what it is to be a frustrated, overlooked cog in the machine, and all the while harbouring star status that let out in her electric chemistry with Comer.<\/p>\n

Eight years and another big show \u2013 Netflix\u2019s excellent comedy drama, The Chair<\/a> \u2013 later and Oh\u2019s attitude to all this history is by turns philosophical, resigned and, increasingly, weary of being asked to relive it. She\u2019s that rare actor willing to say crunchy political things such as \u201cPatriarchy runs within all of us\u201d or \u201cIf you\u2019re going to put all your stock and wait for the white dude to give you the opportunity \u2026 that\u2019s destructive.\u201d Equally, however, raking over and over the bad times gets old. When I ask what makes her angry these days, she says: \u201cIsn\u2019t that just the question and the challenge of life? How do you deal with life not being fair, or\/and turning out the way you want? You\u2019ve gotta figure it out. You have to find different avenues to work out what\u2019s going on subconsciously and consciously. Typically women have \u2013 I shouldn\u2019t say \u2018typically women\u2019.\u201d She thinks for a moment. \u201cNo, I will say that. I think this is the one thing that particularly straight men have a much more difficult time with, which is to find friendships where there are deep conversations, and where they can talk things out. I have that relationship with friends, both men and women, because I\u2019m lucky, but also when you\u2019re an artist you\u2019re trying to figure that out all the time in your work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Figure out what, exactly?<\/p>\n

\u201cFigure out what you\u2019re saying, which is: how do I deal with my rage? Or: how do I deal with what\u2019s going on in the world? You can work that out physically, or talking-wise, or you can work that out in art. I will say I\u2019ve been putting that in every single project.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talking part is vital to Oh, a \u201cbig believer in therapy\u201d who maintains strong connections with her oldest friends. For two years in the early 2000s she was married to Alexander Payne, the director, with whom she worked on the 2004 movie Sideways, and while she won\u2019t talk about her personal life, she will talk about her other relationships. Oh grew up as one of three children of parents \u2013 mother a biochemist, father who worked in business \u2013 who moved to Canada from South Korea in the 1960s, and thinks her middle child status has something to do with her self-appointed role as a \u201cbringer-inner. I\u2019m a keeper of people. I\u2019m not an outsider that way. I like the harmony and community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just that morning, she says, she was on a video call with her oldest friend in Canada, a woman she has known since she was six and with whom she has been through many phases of friendship. \u201cYou have to grow out of your teenagehood, and then you hit another thing when you\u2019re in your 30s.\u201d This was the period during which she and her friend sought help from a therapist together because, \u201cwe were growing into different people and were trying to figure out how to still stay close\u201d. And, \u201cI gotta tell you,\u201d she says, \u201cit was really hard.\u201d Was there a chance it might not have worked out between them? \u201cNo. I feel like the people who are closest to me have to be able to confront things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She bursts out laughing at my expression. \u201cLook how nervous you got.\u201d<\/p>\n

I did!<\/p>\n

\u201cYou thought about who you\u2019re anxious about and then you thought, could I [confront them]? That would be really bad. But then \u2026\u201d She\u2019s not far off.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

It\u2019s useful to remember that Oh isn\u2019t American, and while Canadians can be as avoidant as the British when it comes to emotional honesty, she reminds me that \u201cKorean people are pretty confrontational. There\u2019s a different thing within the [Korean] family structure \u2013 although I do think I\u2019m different, even within my family.\u201d It took her time to learn how to confront people without flying off the handle. \u201cI had to go through so much therapy not to be so reactive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her broad rule of thumb in relationships is, \u201copenness, confidence, willingness. Being non-judgmental. I just think the freer you are, the freer you let everyone else be.\u201d She says: \u201cI have a lot of longstanding friendships. I cherish them and I\u2019m good at maintaining them. I\u2019m the connector of the various groups. I\u2019ll start the WhatsApp, or I\u2019ll start the Zoom during Covid. I\u2019m the one, often times, saying: \u2018OK, let\u2019s all go somewhere!\u2019 You need to put the work in, you can\u2019t just sail by.\u201d These things take work, of course. There is the question of resentment. \u201cYes. You think it only happens in love relationships, but that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Oh was fresh out of theatre school, someone said something to her that she never forgot. Acting hadn\u2019t been her first goal, or rather, she\u2019d disguised to her family how intent she was on pursuing it. \u201cI\u2019m the only person in my family who doesn\u2019t have a master\u2019s,\u201d she has said. She won a place to study journalism at university, which she promised her parents she\u2019d return to if nothing came of the acting gig. Instead, after graduating from the National Theatre<\/a> School of Canada in Montreal, Oh was immediately cast in the 1994 Canadian premiere of David Mamet\u2019s Oleanna. \u201cAnd a good friend said to me: \u2018Oh my God, congratulations, I\u2019m so happy for you. I\u2019m so jealous, and I\u2019m so happy.\u2019 And I saw that she meant both things and that she held both things, and that I could hold both things as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith\/The Guardiandouble quotation markI like dancing; I like moving my body. I think there are answers in the body <\/p>\n

The crucial lesson Oh took from this exchange is that jealousy can be neutralised as long as you own up to it, and this has been key to her experience of hanging on to old friends. \u201cI kept all my friends from early childhood and my theatre school mates, and my working relationship with people in Canada. I\u2019m hopefully going to shoot something in Toronto and went out to dinner with the producer and I was \u2018cheersing\u2019 him, like, you know darling, this is our 30-year relationship. That has great meaning for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She thinks and adds: \u201cLife can be destabilising, so you have to figure out: what are your stabilisers?\u201d<\/p>\n

During those early years of her career in Canada, Oh enjoyed huge amounts of success. After the Mamet play, she was cast as the lead in a critically acclaimed TV movie called The Diary of Evelyn Lau, which told the story of a teenage runaway, followed by the title role in a CBC biopic of Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese Canadian who became an acclaimed journalist and the governor general of Canada. For her lead in a film called Double Happiness, Oh won a best actress award at the Genies, the Canadian equivalent of the Baftas. And so she did what successful Canadian actors do: packed up and headed for Hollywood.<\/p>\n

The crash was brutal and instantaneous. Soon after arriving in LA, an agent told her there were no roles for Asian actresses for at least another year and she\u2019d be better off returning to Canada to \u201cget famous\u201d (she was already famous in Canada). Oh had to take encouragement where she could find it, as she had been doing since she was 10 years old and noticed every person of colour on screen, or, later, took heart from the example set by Yoko Ono. She had two personal interactions \u201cin very key moments\u201d during those years that helped her stay the course when it seemed as if the breakthrough would never come. In 1997, Oh won a CableAce award for best actress in a comedy, for her role in an HBO show called Arliss. At the ceremony, she ran into Alfre Woodard, the Oscar-nominated actor currently knocking it out of the park alongside Alfred Molina in the Netflix sci-fi hit The Boroughs. \u201cShe didn\u2019t know who I was,\u201d says Oh, \u201cbut she took me aside and said something very wonderfully encouraging, which was just, basically, keep going, baby. And that meant a lot to me; I knew who Alfre Woodard was and respected her as an artist, and it was someone just saying, \u2018Keep on\u00a0going.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The second encourager was Jamie Foxx, whom she\u00a0met at another awards do \u2013 Oh laughs, \u201cthat\u2019s when\u00a0you meet these people. And he also basically said\u00a0keep going.\u201d It doesn\u2019t take much. \u201cNo. Sometimes when young people will come to you, they are open and\u00a0vulnerable and it\u2019s a certain responsibility as adults to guide them. It can be just a kind word or you can actually invest in a moment and really talk to the young\u00a0person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Oh does this admirably and with a certain amount of amused tough love. To those in her industry who complain endlessly about the cost of fame, she says mildly, \u201cNothing is free.\u201d If it all gets too much \u2013 the attention, the speculation \u2013 she points out, \u201cYou can always go away.\u201d (They never do.) Oh says she has never been particularly vulnerable when it comes to being addicted to fame, or to anything else for that matter. \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t think that I was ever in danger. Meaning, like, even my lowest times, they were normal lows, like being heartbroken or depressed because you don\u2019t know what to do \u2013 normal things. Maybe I\u2019m not willing to say what my addictions are, but they\u2019re not the classic ones. I\u2019ve got to this point where \u2013 it\u2019s so boring; it\u2019s so boring,\u201d she says with comic despair, \u201c\u2018I have to drink less, because of my stomach.\u2019 It\u2019s bullshit. It\u2019s such a bore.\u201d<\/p>\n

She meditates. (\u201cEverything you need to figure out in life is found sitting on that cushion.\u201d) And she moves around. Before any new role, Oh leans into the physicality of the piece \u2013 she\u2019s a big fan of body work. \u201cBut not exercise; not sports. I like dancing; I like moving my body. I think there are answers in the body. I think there are things that are trapped in the body.\u201d She preps for roles on the move and will often walk a circuit to help memorise a script. \u201cI always look for a park and a tree to learn my lines. It works better for me. When I was doing Killing Eve, I was in this garden and there was a specific tree.\u201d Round and round she went, until she had the part down.<\/p>\n

She says good writing is the key to good acting, and I ask if Phoebe Waller-Bridge\u2019s scripts for that first series of Killing Eve made her job easier. \u201cYes, and that has to do \u2013 specifically with television and film \u2013 that has to do with tone. Something like a play you have a lot more room to interpret it. Something like television, you need the tone to be right there on the page. To write tone, you have to be coming from a very specific point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markWhat is it about a woman who speaks her mind and then gets shot down because of it?<\/p>\n

While the new version of Le Misanthrope has been put into modern language, the dialogue is still in verse and Oh finds it thrilling \u2013 \u201cthe challenge of technical language is juicy for me, because you have to work a different muscle. It\u2019s a different way of putting in the emotional discovery. It\u2019s an old play!\u201d<\/p>\n

With Tom Mison in rehearsal for The Misanthrope. Photograph: Marc Brenner<\/p>\n

It is; Le Misanthrope opened in 1666 at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Palais-Royal in Paris, though Oh finds it has relevance for our times. \u201cMoli\u00e8re set it in his theatre milieu where there are artists and writers and gossip. It\u2019s a lot about hypocrisy and Alice\u2019s own search for honesty and truth, which has meaning in 2026 \u2013 the difficulty in finding truth. I hope it has a wider meaning about what it is to want to tell the truth, want to be honest, and how difficult it is.\u201d In the play, Alice gets into trouble for speaking her mind, and, says Oh, \u201cI need to figure out what that means \u2013 not only for the character. What does it mean to speak your mind at this time of your life? What is it about a woman who speaks her mind and then gets shot down because of it?\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months ago, Oh voiced her support for Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and newly elected mayor of New York, and was thrilled when he showed up at a performance of Twelfth Night in Central Park. \u201cWhat was amazing, as a non-New Yorker, was to witness how he affected our entire cast, which was very diverse; half over 50, half very young. And the way the cast lit up meeting Mamdani, it was like, oh, this is who he represents and this is how much hope he elicits in New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh is active in promoting the authentic representation of Asian cultures on screen. In 2021, she gave a passionate speech at a Stop Asian Hate rally<\/a> in Pittsburgh, in which she repeated what has come to be a famous mantra: \u201cI am proud to be Asian. I belong here.\u201d In 2022, she wrote about her career for an online literary magazine, in which she said, \u201cFor the first time, I\u2019m finally getting film roles where my character\u2019s name is Korean.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has taken such a long time to get here, both in terms of the industry she works in and what she has had to do to process and absorb the years of being sidelined. She\u2019s not there yet, she says. And yet. \u201cAll the work that you\u2019re doing, on your own time, with your own heart, in the middle of the fucking night. That doubt? And the raw depression? And the questioning, and the anger? It\u2019s alchemising into something.\u201d When she talks about owning all the different parts of herself \u2013 including the internalised racism and misogyny \u2013 the conclusion she often comes to is, \u201cThere is no self. Meaning you don\u2019t have to be tied to self. But that\u2019s not\u00a0easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Oh is here to have fun. Backstage at the National, she\u2019s doing the thing she does best, which is creating community. On the table between us is a water bottle decorated with stickers she had made during the run of Twelfth Night of all her co-stars, including Peter Dinklage and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, pulling a face. \u201cOh, that\u2019s Jesse, tasting hot sauce,\u201d she says, laughing. Later, Oh asks a production assistant if he can get her candid photos of her present co-stars to be made into stickers for the same purpose \u2013 an ad-hoc team building thing that amuses her.<\/p>\n

And when she leaves the theatre? \u201cI shit you not, I\u00a0have to sleep,\u201d she says, eyes wide with amazement; Oh, who is by nature wildly energetic, also knows her limitations. \u201cWith this play, I need to sleep 10 hours. I\u00a0get into bed at 8.30pm, and I get up at 7am.\u201d It\u2019s as single focus as it gets, but after all those years of feeling herself to be in the wrong place, denied the opportunities, that\u2019s a luxury she\u2019s here for. \u201cI\u2019m allowed to concentrate on that one thing. I\u2019m doing this for a purpose. It\u2019s a privilege to be able to focus on that. Then hopefully you deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Misanthrope<\/a> is at the Lyttelton at the National Theatre, London, until 1 August.<\/p>\n

Shoot credits: Hair: Carlos Ferraz. Makeup: Sara Hill. Stylist\u2019s assistant: Charlotte Gornall. Main image and final shot: pink shirt and white trousers, both Carven<\/a>; bracelet, resin ring and resin pendant necklace, all Dinosaur Designs<\/a>; earrings and gold ear cuff, both Otiumberg<\/a>. Fabric and sofa, House of Hackney. Sofa shot: midi dress and embellished shoes, both Simone Rocha<\/a>. White and yellow dress shot: sequin dress, Huishan Zhang<\/a>; earrings, Completedworks<\/a>. Pink dress shot: organza dress, Cecilie Bahnsen; earrings, Completedworks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sandra Oh bursts into a back room at the National Theatre in London with wayward post-rehearsal energy. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-648940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}