Sandra Oh Makes History as the First Asian Actress to Win 2 Golden Globes

January 7, 2019

Sandra Oh made history as the first Asian actress to win more than one Golden Globe award on Sunday night.

Oh, who also co-hosted the awards ceremony with Andy Samberg, received Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for her role as Eve Polastri in BBC America’s “Killing Eve.”

The show, based on Luke Jennings’s “Codename Villanelle” novella series, premiered on April 8, 2018, with a second season arriving in spring.

It follows Polaski, a British intelligence agent who tracks down Villanelle (Jodie Comer), a psychopathic assassin-for-hire.

Oh first received a Golden Globe in 2006 — Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television — for her iconic role as Cristina Yang in ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The 47-year-old Korean-Canadian actress is also the first Asian woman to win a Golden Globe for best actress in a TV drama in 38 years, following Yoko Shimada who won for her performance in “Shogun” in 1981.

Even better, Oh is also the first Asian to ever host the ceremony — and interestingly the second host to win while emceeing after Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation”) in 2014.

“I said yes to the fear of being on this stage tonight because I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change,” she said during the opening.

Oh’s victory relieves her loss at last year’s Emmys, where she was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series also for her performance in “Killing Eve.”

Still, she was the first Asian actress to ever be recognized in the said category.

Oh is not the only actor of Asian descent to win on Sunday night. Darren Criss received Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television for his role as Andrew Cunanan in Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.”

Criss honored his Filipino mom saying, “As we’ve seen, this has been a marvelous year for representation in Hollywood, and I am so enormously proud to be a teeny, tiny part of that as the son of a firecracker Filipino woman from Cebu that dreamed of coming to this country and getting to be invited to cool parties like this. Mom, I know you’re watching this. You are hugely responsible for most of the good things in my life. I love you dearly. I dedicate this to you.”

Featured Images via NBC (Left) and BBC America (Right)

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