Sandra Oh is “happy” that her new role on Killing Eve is a departure from her beloved Grey’s Anatomy character Dr. Christina Yang.
The Catfight actress, 46, was asked about playing Eve — a woman hunting down a psychopathic killer — and how the roles share similar character traits at a Television Critics Association panel on Friday, January 12.
“I don’t feel that way. I feel very much in a completely different and separate world with Killing Eve. I was actually really happy for the departure,” she said. “They’re both determined characters. But where I feel, and I’m so interested with Eve, is her frazzled-ness, how she doesn’t have things under control … even the first two episodes, how she’s quite insecure and how she has not found her voice, and that’s really what initially gravitated me towards this project.”
She added: “And also, my character is intricately involved with Villanelle and whatever that might mean, that you’re constantly in this tone and style of the thriller. It’s so different that I don’t necessarily have those similar character comparisons at all. But I’m so happy and proud to be playing Eve, because it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.”
As for how Oh compares to Eve, her castmates quickly jumped in to share their opinions.
“She’s very much like Eve. In the mornings she comes into the trailer and she suddenly throws her head back … and she dries her hair, and she talks at the rate of knots. So she’s already thinking usually about something to do with yesterday or today,” Fiona Shaw said. “It’s as if she’s solving the series as we’re going along.”
“Sandra is a little detective,” Kirby Howell-Baptiste also noted, as Jodi Comer added that Oh has “the greatest hair I have ever seen.”
As previously reported, Oh left the hit ABC medical drama after the 10th season, telling The Hollywood Reporter in August 2013, “Creatively, I really feel like I gave it my all, and I feel ready to let her go. It’s such an interesting thing to play a character for so long and to actually get the sense that she wants to be let go as well.”
Killing Eve will premiere on Sunday, April 8, on BBC.
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