After starring in ABC’s hit medical drama Grey’s Anatomy for almost a decade, Sandra Oh opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about her first series regular since leaving Grey’s.
During an Emmy Roundtable discussion for THR Oh said that saying yes to Killing Eve was like “falling in love.”
“I think it takes a while to eventually get to a point in your career where you can actually make a choice and after a decade of my life on a show, I had enough economic power to be able to say no.”
Oh chose to actively wait for four years for her next major project.
“Those four years were like active waiting. I was not working really in here [motions to gut] to be able to figure out what the right thing is and what it is to say no and what it is to say yes.”
Oh plays Killing Eve’s hero and protagonist, an MI5 officer named Eve Polastri. She is one half of the female-led crime thriller, the other is a notorious assassin named Villanelle (Jodie Comer). The series premiered in April on BBC America.
“It was the character and Phoebe’s voice [Killing Eve’s showrunner and executive producer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge] that I thought, ‘This is the right thing for me. This feels right to say yes.’”
“I think we’ve all had to along the way make our decisions of, ‘Well this crappy but I got to eat’ to then the point of going, ‘OK, how do I want to influence the storyline and how do I, let’s say regarding other people who do not have as much power, how do I influence the casting on the show? How do I influence the people behind the camera on the show because now after all this time, I’m able to say something? If you still want to work as an actor and be creative and empowered as an actor, I swear you can still do it.”
