5 Things You Didn’t Know About Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh is finally having her moment. After stealing our hearts as beloved best friend, truth-teller (and the most heartbreaking on-screen crier of all time) Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy and charming us in Sideways, Oh took center stage in 2018’s female-driven thriller series Killing Eve as the title character.

The world thankfully seems to have caught onto the Sandra Oh fandom now that Killing Eve has become a hit show and Oh has received the accolades she deserves; not only did Oh cohost the 2019 Golden Globe Awards with Andy Samberg (one of the only actually enjoyable hosting stints in recent memory), she also won the Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Drama Series category. Both achievements were history-making: Oh was both the first performer of Asian heritage to host the Golden Globes and the first Asian actor to win multiple Globes.

So now that we’ve established that if you didn’t love Oh already, you very likely do now, you’re probably going to want to learn everything you can about her. Without further ado, here are five things you didn’t know about Sandra Oh:

1. Oh is actually Canadian!
Despite playing American-in-London Eve Polastri, Oh is Canadian: Her Korean parents immigrated to Canada in the 1960s, settling in the suburbs of Ottawa. She was given a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2011. Oh told Vogue last year that she’s “sure everyone carries the feeling of being the other. Being a Korean-Canadian growing up in Canada, being a Canadian living in America—there’s always this slightly outsider point of view, which I really try to embrace.”

2. Oh walked away from her Grey’s Anatomy audition.
Cristina Yang was almost played by someone else (take a deep breath). An Australian magazine reported that she walked away from the audition partway through for “a combination of reasons. . . . She’d left her phone at home, forgotten her wallet, and had a last-second call from her agent. But in the end, it just didn’t feel right at the time, so she left.” Oh elaborated that she “basically walked away from the audition . . . I came in early, warmed up and then waited to test with everyone else. Then it’s like, ‘Sorry, I have to leave.’” But thanks to a connection Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes felt, she got the part anyway and played it for 10 years.

3. Oh was once married to Sideways director Alexander Payne.
Payne and Oh met before Oh costarred in the hit wine country film Payne cowrote and directed; they were married from 2003 to 2006, but Oh keeps her private life very private. “I don’t listen to this stuff. I don’t see it,” she told Marie Claire in 2007 about gossip on her love life. “I tell my people I don’t want to know about it, because while rationally you might know it’s ridiculous, it can hurt your feelings. It can knock me off from being my authentic self.” (Her rumored boyfriend as of December 2018 is Russian artist Lev Rukhin, but who knows!)

4. Oh practices Buddhist meditation.
In order to stay sane in Hollywood, Oh told Vulture that she practices Vipassana. “It takes a long time to free oneself from chatter—goals, social media, image, persona,” she said. “And if you’re able to move through in that way, you can actually start trying to create from a different place.”

5. Oh and her nemesis on Killing Eve are friends in the real world.
Jodie Comer’s Villanelle might be looking to kill Oh on the show they share, but in real life, Oh and Comer are great friends (as they are with Killing Eve creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge). Comer is one of the only frequent guests of Oh’s fairly quiet Instagram account, and the two even held hands on the Golden Globes red carpet. For fans who are used to seeing Oh and Comer literally at each other’s throats, it was a wild moment.