It took a long time for the actor to find her groove \u2013 then the smash TV spy thriller changed everything. She talks about getting advice from A-listers, speaking her mind, and why she\u2019s switching to theatre<\/p>\n
Sandra Oh bursts into a back room at the National Theatre 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, 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
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