This week's interview is from The New York Times, originally published on October 17, 2004.
By HILARY DE VRIES
LOS ANGELES
NURSING a case of the flu, caught while filming her latest movie, the drama "Sorry Haters," co-starring Robin Wright Penn, the 33-year-old Ontario-born actress Sandra Oh is working through what should be a sick day. She has half a dozen films awaiting release, including "3 Needles," a Canadian drama in which she plays a nun nursing African AIDS victims. Beginning in January, she will also be seen in a new television series, the ABC medical drama "Grey's Anatomy," in which she plays an ambitious surgical intern. It will be her first TV role since Ms. Oh landed in Hollywood eight years ago playing Robert Wuhl's spunky assistant on the HBO comedy "Arli$$."
After a morning on the set, Ms. Oh is bundled in a shawl here in the Hollywood Hills house she shares with her husband, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director Alexander Payne ("Election," "About Schmidt"). She is doing her best to explain "Sideways," Mr. Payne's oenophilic buddy comedy, which opens on Friday and co-stars Ms. Oh, Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen. It is the couple's first film together, shot only six months after they married in January 2003. In a conversation punctuated by coughing fits and bursts of profanity, Ms. Oh talked about her new series, working with her husband and what it's like being one of the only actors of Korean descent working in Hollywood.
HILARY DE VRIES: In "Sideways" you play a sexy, smart, wine-loving biker who is also a bit of a terror. It's a big change from most of your roles in Hollywood, where you were in danger of being permanently labeled "sassy."
SANDRA OH: Per-ma-nent-ly! Yeah, that happens when you play characters who are in positions of authority and you're not the lead. You're relegated to sassy.
Q. Well, your husband is one writer who obviously sees you as something more than sassy. Were the two of you looking for a project to do together?
A. No, Alexander doesn't work that way. He just thought the part of Stephanie was right for me - and it's not necessarily the kind of part people would think of me for. Even when we were shooting, people would say, "Oh, I thought you'd be playing the other woman," Maya who is more sincere and earthy.
Q. Given all the wine in the movie, it looked like it was fun to film.
A. The movie is an ode to wine on one hand, but it's also a beautiful examination of the nearing- middle-age white American male.
Q. And that's interesting to you as a woman?
A. When was the last time you saw a real [expletive] friendship between two men in a movie? I mean a real one? Not the "I'm the wild cop and you're the by-the-book cop," which is the only way we see men relating to each other in movies. It's the story of two men, one who won't grow up and the other one is filled with self-loathing.
Q. Not surprisingly, the women in the movie are--
A. Much more together. Even though they are not on screen that much, the women have a tremendous impact because of the way they're written. I wish more women would be represented in film like that because I think how Stephanie and Maya deal with men is how women really want to deal with men.
Q. Which is how exactly?
A. One, beat the [expletive] out of them. And two, that scene where Maya tells Paul's character I have spent the last three years of my life getting out of a relationship and I'm just fine. How many times I wish I had the sense of myself and the strength to present myself that way and also how many times I wish I had bashed someone's face in.
Q. In the film, you get that chance to do just that. Was that hard to film?
A. No! Alexander said to me, "Just call on those centuries of female Korean rage." But also, Stephanie doesn't have that much screen time, so I had to explain with as little dialogue as possible why she is the way she is. Why she would fall for this guy and why she would let him put her daughter to bed - I mean, she's not the best mom - and why she would take up a helmet and assault him. O.K., so she's not that grounded. Well, what could help show that? Alexander and I talked about that - I'm lucky because I can talk to the director this way - and I said, "Well, what if her mother is Caucasian?''
Q. Implying your character had been adopted?
A. Which is the reality for a lot of Koreans. It's also kind of funny. But it tells her story in a very subtle way.
Q. It seems like people are only finding out you guys got married because of the film.
A. That's fine with us. I mean, you don't have to make a big deal out of it.
Q. So he says he asked you out, but you turned him down, for eight months.
A. Well, I was busy.
Q. What do mean busy? With work, your personal life?
A. B-U-S-Y, in all capitals! [Laughing] I want it in the [expletive] record that Alexander Payne chased Sandra Oh for eight months and she would not go out with him because she was "busy." And by the way, the first thing you notice about Alexander Payne is that he is very handsome.
Q. Do you want to have children? You played a mother in "Under the Tuscan Sun" and now in "Sideways."
A. I don't know, but as soon as you pass 30 in Hollywood, you can play mothers of 15-year-olds, which is [expletive] ridiculous.
Q. But at least they're not sassy. Neither is the woman you play on your new TV series. Was that part of your reason for doing TV again?
A. I made the decision to go back and do TV because I've made four movies last year and worked three months and I can't do that.
Q. Too much? Too little?
A. Too little! Look, I understand myself more as an actor in Hollywood now and I know that I don't get jobs in films by auditioning. I'm not blonde. You can't place me in movies the way you can with certain actors. It's very difficult for my agents. They say to me, "I have a hard time getting you in" and all I want is a shot. Some directors like Altman or Alexander cast who they want, but otherwise you have to drop about $15 million from your budget if you want to do that. I mean, unless you're Gwyneth Paltrow, most women can't greenlight a $5 million movie.
Q. But you were just in "Under the Tuscan Sun," which was a big-budget, mainstream picture. How did that happen?
A. Because [the director] Audrey Wells believed in me, wrote that part for me and pushed for me. I know for me to be in any film over $3 million, there is someone pushing for me because I am not an easy sell. All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen.
Q. So wait, "Under the Tuscan Sun" didn't lead to other offers?
A. After it came out, I couldn't get an [expletive] audition. The only other role I got was another best friend and they said to me, "Well, you've already played a best friend so we're not going to cast you." That was a turning point for me to go back to TV - I'd hit the glass ceiling of playing the best friend. And we all know the classic best-friend role is [expletive]. You're on the periphery. You're all sardonic, all sass-say. You're not even sassy, you're sass-say. But even so, you're not going to let me play another one? It was enraging. It's not like they're ever going to say to Danny Glover, "Oh, you can't play another buddy because you've already played one." Or say to Jeremy Piven, "You can't play John Cusack's best friend again." So because I don't want to depress myself by going out for [expletive], I would rather work in television where the roles are [expletive] better. I can get a better role in TV and work more constantly than I can waiting around for my friends in Canada to call me every four years - which they do - and I go up there and play a leading role.
Q. Was your new character on "Grey's Anatomy," the intern Christina Yang, written as Asian?
A. No, she was a pert little blonde and the thing is the woman who runs the show, Shonda Rhimes, is a black woman, which makes a big [expletive] difference. What I like about my character is she's ambitious, she's not apologetic. She's a complete female character who doesn't have to be bitchy or conniving.
Q. Why are so few Asian actors working in Hollywood? The Screen Actors Guild just released new job figures that show a decline in the number of Asian actors. I mean there's you, Lucy Liu and Margaret Cho, and then I have to stop and think.
A. And can we even name a male Asian actor? It's because Hollywood imports Asian stars who already have worldwide appeal. They're wonderful actors, all of them, but Hollywood wants them because Hong Kong and Chinese action movies are so popular now.
Q. So it makes more sense to cast a Maggie Cheung or Gong Li from China than Sandra Oh from Canada?
A. Absolutely. And the same thing is true of Latino actors, except for J. Lo, who is a global entity. And Queen [Latifah.] She's got such credibility. A lot of women wind up producing themselves, but I don't. I just want to act. Just give me good writing because what I do well is [expletive] interpret words. But sometimes I don't think they know who I am.
Q. Who do "they" think you are?
A. People ask me what I'm writing. They think I'm Sandra Tsing Loh. Or they ask about stand-up. "No, that's Margaret Cho." I really think there is this kind of glomming, that they think we are somehow all the same person.
Q. Or that you're all best friends.
A. Yeah, but I'm not and I would love to be friends with Margaret. She is such a singular artist and she was not supported by her own community. Koreans didn't support her because of their own [expletive] bias, what's the word, something -ist, not racist but just that [expletive] where they only want Asian stars who look like [expletive] Asian kewpie dolls.
Hilary de Vries is the author of the Hollywood satire "So Five Minutes Ago," published earlier this year by Villard.
1 comment :
Very good interview!
Thanks for posting all these past interviews and pics! :)
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