Sandra Oh appeared on “Sunday Today” with Willie Geist to open up about her “traumatic” sudden rise to fame as Dr. Christina Yang on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Loss of privacy: Oh, 50, revealed she lost her privacy when the ABC medical drama series became a massive success, CNN reported.
- “To be perfectly honest, it was traumatic,” Oh told Geist in the interview. “The reason why I’m saying that is the circumstances you need to do your work is with a lot of privacy. So when one loses one’s anonymity, you have to build skills to still try and be real.”
- Oh, who was part of the series for the first 10 seasons, recalled how she went from “not being able to go out” and “hiding in restaurants” to “being able to manage attention, manage expectation, while not losing the sense of self.”
- She eventually found a way to cope with the fame with the help of a good therapist. “You just have to work at finding your way to stay grounded. And a lot of times that’s by saying ‘no,’” Oh said.
Other details: Even though other original cast members, like Patrick Dempsey, who played the character Derek Shepherd, have reappeared on the iconic series, Oh never returned.
- In a past interview on The Los Angeles Times’ podcast “Asian Enough,” Oh admitted she had already moved on from “Grey’s Anatomy” and decided not to make a cameo appearance in the newest season, the show’s 17th, in which some other main actors had returned to reprise their roles. She stated she was turning her focus to other projects.
- Oh is playing another doctor, albeit a different kind, in her latest series, “The Chair,” which is now streaming on Netflix. Oh’s character in the series, Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, is the first woman and person of color, within the show, appointed as the chairperson of Pembroke University’s English department.
- Forbes called the Netflix series “one of the best new series of 2021” in its review.
- Oh was recently interviewed by the all-girl punk band The Linda Lindas regarding her new series.
