Sandra Oh 'got very, very sick' amid Grey's Anatomy fame

Playing a doctor made Sandra Oh sick.

The star endured health battles after the debut of Grey's Anatomy in 2005 launched her to superstardom.

"When Grey's Anatomy came, my life changed very much," Oh said during a chat for Variety's Actors on Actors series. "I got sick. I think my whole body was very, very sick. Even though you keep on working, right?"

Oh, portrayed Dr. Christina Yang on the smash hit for 10 seasons, said she learned to prioritize her health.

"It's just like, 'Oh, I can't sleep. Oh, my back hurts. I don't know what's wrong with my skin,'" she said. "I learned that I had to take care of my health first."

Oh's advice came during her conversation with Squid Game star Jung Ho-yeon, who also grappled with meteoric success after the violent series hit Netflix in September 2021.

And it wasn't just her physical health that took a hit during her time on the ABC medical drama; Oh also learned about the importance of her mental health.

"That's not only your body, right? That is your soul. That is definitely your mind," she said. "Because you can't ultimately depend on anyone else. You have to somehow find it within yourself."

"Acting is draining work", Oh said, and she's found her own outlet for that.

"I have to spend with my creative self. That could be sleeping, that could be walking in the woods, that could be meditating, that could be actually going to class, that could be all those things," she said. "Because I realize that part sustains all the—almost the immediacy, the ability to be present."

These lessons were important when Oh took the lead role in AMC's Killing Eve, which premiered in 2018.

"Killing Eve was probably one of the hardest jobs I've ever had because I felt so much of the entire show is so about the internal life at least of Eve," she said. "A really great thing about television is that you are creating her, or you're creating them, in real time."

Oh said she was pleased to see how different her character Eve looked from the first season to the final one because the character herself changed so much.

"I felt ultimately, emotionally, for Eve to start out as in 'I have a regular life, I'm kind of basically happy,' but at the very end, she's lost everything, but in survival has gained more of herself as a whole woman. It is a piece about the female psyche," she said. "And within that: How does one actually authentically grow and widen yourself as a woman?"

Killing Eve concluded with season four in March, and in the end, Oh was satisfied with the way she met that challenge. "I felt like what I laid down was real, at least hopefully."

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