Sandra Oh Says ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Fame Was ‘Very Challenging,’ ‘Stressful’

Sandra Oh spent 10 seasons on ABC’s hit medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” but she wasn’t exactly prepared for overnight fame. The soapy show immediately made her recognizable, and the Golden Globe winner says she wasn’t exactly happy about being in the limelight.

“It was traumatic,” Oh told the Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “Everything was different then. Social media was not what it is. People didn’t have phones the way they do now. But the paparazzi — the people looking to fill trash magazines — were definitely around.”

The Canadian actress has been working on screen since the late 1980s, so she'd settled into her career that was successful without tabloid fame. That all changed when the paparazzi started waiting outside the "Grey's Anatomy" set every day. While Oh certainly doesn’t regret her career choice, it took quite a bit of getting used to.

“I don’t know if the hunger and the need for fame was the same as it is now, and that’s never been a focus for me,” she explained. “So what people don’t understand — when people really want to be famous — it is exceptionally destabilizing when you lose anonymity. And in ways you cannot predict because it’s very specific to each person.”

Obviously, Oh managed to deal with it. After all, she stuck around the hospital playing Dr. Cristina Yang opposite Ellen Pompeo’s Dr. Meredith Grey for a decade. Yet, she noted that it took a lot of work to deal with the pressure of the spotlight.

“For me, I found it very difficult and I had to do constant therapy to be able to manage the energy overload of it,” Oh said. “So it was very stressful. It comes with a lot of other things as well. But your question regarding what was the change like, I found it very challenging.”

The “Killing Eve” star previously called fame “traumatic” when she spoke to Vulture in 2018. “There’s a certain type of perceived success, but I can also see how that causes stress, how that can cause conflict, and how that can cause people to lose their way," Oh said. "I experienced it as traumatic."