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Not long ago, Sandra Oh stood behind a speaker's stand at a diploma awarding in the northeastern state. She was there to offer new alumni words of hope during a time of permacrisis. Stepping up to the challenge, she opened up about her own past battles with mental health challenges and worry, then made a genuine case for accepting discomfort and empathy. “So we can meet suffering again and again and not lose our decency,” she emphasized. This was vitally necessary, she added, when many world leaders “seek control through anxiety and domination.”

Then came the instant that would capture global attention. Oh instructed everyone to rise and do something her famous character used to do when times got tough. “Dance it out!” she commanded as an upbeat song energized the crowd. “Cherish this experience!”

“It was incredibly nerve-wracking about it,” the performer shares. “I prepared extensively.” She had been imagining herself into the mindset of 20-year-olds not just anxious about their own prospects but about the broader world. “Society faces immense challenges!” she says, envisioning their dark thoughts. “There’s wars all over! The emotional burden results in constant negative consumption.”

But, crucially, she aimed her attendees to find their way to happiness – which inspired the dance. “Sitting there trying to bear the pain,” she says, succinctly expressing the belief she shared that day, “can guide you toward how to live fully.”

Currently available T-shirts emblazoned the phrase she expressed at a televised ceremony: ‘Representation matters deeply’

That speech – with its vulnerability and empathy, its consciousness of the world’s cruelties while still finding moments of happiness – feels deeply authentic for the performer. Originating near a Canadian city to a family of Korean heritage, the actress, whose breakthrough roles in acclaimed programs made her the first Asian woman to win multiple industry accolades, has since built a following for her fierce support of increased diversity in the industry.

Engaging and lively, her discussion is filled with plenty of lightness. “Wait please!” is the opening line heard as she chats by phone from her current location, playing for time as she attempts unsuccessfully to turn on her camera. But Oh soon becomes more thoughtful, prone to lengthy pauses as she discusses everything from the environmental crisis to AI to racial equality.

Relevantly, the actress’s current work – an thought-provoking feature – is about seeking hope amid the burning. After an catastrophic, computer-generated disaster hits Earth in the carefully selected year of a coming time, society has been restructured. The story fast-forwards: tranquility has been established. Workplaces, computers and handheld technology are relics of a fallen civilisation. People spend their days tending to their gardens. But there are restrictions: they don’t travel, electricity is restricted and – the central condition – everyone must accept a scheduled end at midlife. She portrays an individual who experienced the initial disaster, who is assisting her child into her new job as a “recorder” of these “conclusion” ceremonies.

If your main emotional connection is a device, an effect is taking place to you at an unconscious level

“I was most interested in the script’s contemplation of dying,” says Oh, in particular how the awareness of one’s future passing would change one’s outlook to life. It’s an ever more pressing question, the actress explains, recalling an initial showing last year while environmental emergencies raged across a populated region. It brought home the idea that the film is not really about the future. “This is current reality,” she says. “We are in the burning right now.”

While filming the project, she requested the director and writer to include artificial intelligence in the script. How does she think technology is changing our lives? “Screens and networks,” she says, “reshape our behavior. When your primary source of love is the phone, something is happening to you at an unconscious level.”

The way she copes to this retraining – “I’m already struggling, and my generation wasn’t raised with it” – is choosing to do “modest, highly impactful” projects such as this newest endeavor, as well as theatre. She has been playing a classic role in an open-air theatre in a natural setting. “I’m engaging with many attendees in an public space. You can feel people really desire to come to the show to laugh, experience joy, for it to be positive, out in nature. You’re united and you’re sharing – through artistic expression.” In the age of the technology, “authentic exchanges become incredibly valuable.”

She frequently discusses making intentional decisions, active decisions. “A benefit of getting older,” says the actor, who has recently celebrated her mid-fifties. “Numerous aspects in society, that you’ve been living in unconsciously. But you see that moment of clarity coming through – and realise that’s what you want to follow. I think that’s what this stage is about. And it’s very engaging.”

The performer has shared unlearning the racism she internalised from her youth, singling out a wounding experience with an agent when she first came to a major city in the 1990s. The agent suggested her to return as there weren’t any opportunities for Asian actors there. Decades later, on reading a landmark script, she was unsure which lesser role was intended for her. “Actually,” her manager said. “It’s the main character.”

Lately, she has dedicated her considerable heft into narratives from the global community, starring in animated films, horror projects, and family comedy. She’s also played distinct parts in period pieces and university settings. All these roles, unlike the ones that made her famous, specifically consider her character’s roots in the script.

“I recall attending a industry celebration when a landmark film swept the awards,” she says. “The moment mattered. To build something, you need a larger community – to gain momentum, to learn and grow, to know how to work together. When I started, colleagues like me – we’d been acquainted for ever, but we rarely collaborated on a project, because we were always separate. It’s still a tough industry, veering towards, honestly, a {patriarchal white mainstream|traditional power structure|established