Not long ago, Sandra Oh took the stage behind a podium at a diploma awarding in a New England location. She was there to deliver recent graduates words of hope during a time of continuous instability. Rising to the task, she spoke candidly about her own previous struggles with emotional difficulties and nervousness, then made a genuine case for embracing discomfort and compassion. “So we can meet hardship again and again and not lose our decency,” she declared. This was increasingly important, she noted, when many global figures “claim power through fear and domination.”
Then came the moment that would spread widely. Oh instructed everyone to stand up and do something Cristina Yang used to do when times got tough. “Dance it out!” she exhorted as an energetic melody washed over the audience. “Remember this feeling!”
“I was very, very, very nervous about it,” the performer shares. “It took serious effort.” She had been placing herself into the mindset of recent graduates not just anxious about their own paths but about the global situation. “Our planet is in crisis!” she says, considering their pessimistic outlooks. “Violence is rampant! The weight is overwhelming, leading to endless scrolling.”
But, crucially, her intention was her listeners to find their way to positivity – which inspired the dance. “Facing hardship directly,” she says, clearly capturing the outlook she shared that day, “assists in discovering how to be in the world.”
You can find T-shirts displaying the phrase she expressed at a televised ceremony: ‘Representation matters deeply’
The presentation – with its vulnerability and empathy, its awareness of the world’s injustices while still embracing moments of celebration – feels particularly on-brand for Oh. Raised near Canada’s capital to parents who emigrated from Korea, the actor, whose iconic performances in acclaimed programs made her the pioneering performer to win multiple major awards, has since built a following for her fierce support of wider representation in the film and television.
Charming and energetic, the actress’s conversation is filled with plenty of laughs. “Hold on baby!” is the opening line noticed as she connects by phone from her current location, buying a moment as she tries and fails to turn on her camera. But Oh soon becomes more introspective, inclined toward lengthy breaks as she discusses everything from the planetary challenges to technology to social justice.
Fittingly, her latest project – an independent movie – is about discovering meaning amid the burning. After an apocalyptic, computer-generated disaster hits Earth in the very deliberately chosen year of a coming time, civilization has been restructured. By a future date: tranquility has been established. Workplaces, computers and mobile phones are remnants of a failed civilisation. People spend their days tending to their gardens. But there are conditions: they avoid journeys, power is limited and – the main twist – everyone must undergo an official passing at midlife. The actress embodies an individual who experienced the 2025 catastrophe, who is guiding her offspring into her new job as a “documenter” of these “conclusion” ceremonies.
When your primary source of love is technology, an effect is taking place to you at an deep level
“What captivated me was the script’s contemplation of dying,” says Oh, in particular how the certainty of one’s future passing would change one’s perspective to life. It’s an ever more pressing question, the actress explains, referencing an early screening last year while environmental emergencies raged across a populated region. It brought home the idea that the film is not really about the future. “It is what’s happening right now,” she says. “We are in the burning right now.”
While filming the project, she requested the director and writer to include tech themes in the script. How does she think digital tools is changing our lives? “Screens and networks,” she says, “are retraining human beings. If devices become your emotional core, something is happening to you at an deep level.”
The way she copes to this change – “I’m already struggling, and my generation wasn’t raised with it” – is choosing to do “small, profoundly meaningful” works such as this newest endeavor, as well as stage acting. She has been embodying a renowned character in an open-air theatre in a famous urban park. “I’m engaging with a large audience in an open-air theatre. You can feel people really want to come to the show to laugh, have a good time, for it to be positive, in the fresh air. You’re in community and you’re connecting – through classic storytelling.” In the age of the machine, “such true human interactions become incredibly valuable.”
The actress emphasizes making conscious choices, active decisions. “A benefit of getting older,” says the actor, who has recently celebrated her mid-fifties. “There is so much in society, that you’ve been accepting without thought. But you see that glimmer of hope coming through – and realise that’s what you want to embrace. I think that’s what experience is about. And it’s very engaging.”
The performer has shared unlearning the racism she absorbed from her youth, singling out a painful memory with an professional when she moved to a major city in the past decade. The figure advised her to go back as there was no work for artists like her there. Years after, on reading a landmark script, she was unsure which lesser role was intended for her. “Honey,” her manager said. “You’re the star.”
More recently, she has dedicated her substantial platform into stories from the Asian diaspora, acting in major releases, thriller stories, and entertaining features. She’s also played diverse characters in period pieces and university settings. These characters, unlike the ones that made her famous, directly address her character’s roots in the script.
“I recall attending a industry celebration when a historic movie received top honors,” she says. “It meant a great deal. To create change, you need a wide collective – to gain momentum, to develop skills, to know how to help one another. When I started, colleagues like me – we’d crossed paths for ever, but we never shared on a stage or set, because we were always on our own. It’s still a competitive environment, veering towards, honestly, a {patriarchal white mainstream|traditional power structure|established
