Rubasingham describes Alice as a “hugely intelligent, passionate and complicated character” and “couldn’t think of anyone better” than Oh (“a really smart, brilliant and interesting actress”) to play her. She’s one of “an incredible group of female artists” that Rubasingham is bringing to the National stage in the coming months, from Letitia Wright and Anne-Marie Duff to Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss.
The last time Oh was working in London she was chasing Jodie Comer’s Villanelle across the capital, as Killing Eve’s scatty MI5 operative Eve Polastri, a part which bagged her a Golden Globe, Sag Award and Critics’ Choice Award. Since the show concluded in 2022, Oh has been in her “theatre era”. There was her New York Metropolitan Opera debut, a non-singing role as a gleeful villain in La Fille du Régiment; Olivia in Twelfth Night in Central Park opposite Lupita Nyong’o; and an off-Broadway hit, The Welkin.
It’s been a homecoming of sorts – it was school plays, along with ballet, which captivated Oh, the middle daughter of South Korean immigrants, her mother a biochemist and her father a businessman, growing up in a small city in Ontario. Against their advice, she rejected a more conventional career to attend Canada’s National Theatre School. Indie movies and Canadian TV paved the way to her booking six years on the HBO black comedy Arliss, and a scene-stealing role as a furious scorned lover in Alexander Payne’s Sideways. (She was also married to the director for three years, divorcing in 2006.) But it was as Grey’s Anatomy’s Cristina Yang, a part she played from 2005 to 2014, that sent her stratospheric.
Being able to clear her schedule for an extended period of stage work has been a privilege. “I like this time in my life,” Oh tells me, flashing a grin. “It’s a very difficult position to get to, but I have choice.” After The Misanthrope, Oh will fly to Toronto to shoot a thriller with acclaimed Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai, and, on stage, would someday love to play Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, or Lear, or Vanya. It’s about variety, she reasons. And depth. “I’m not a writer or director, nor do I particularly want to be,” she says, “but coming deeper into midlife, I’m interested in finding a collaborator where I don’t have to look for what I can fit into. There’s so much shit that doesn’t fucking fit me. Why should I try to jam myself into the canon? I’ve always felt outside of it. I’ll just create a new canon. I really want to be part of that.”
