This summer, Sandra Oh stood behind a lectern at a graduation ceremony in New Hampshire, preparing to give university-leavers words of hope at a time of permacrisis. She rose to the challenge, opening up about her past battles with depression and anxiety, before making a heartfelt case for embracing discomfort and kindness “so we can meet cruelty again and again and not lose our humanity”. This was increasingly important, she explained, when many world leaders “claim power through fear and oppression”. And then came the moment that would go viral. Oh instructed everyone to stand up and do something Cristina Yang, her career-making character on Grey’s Anatomy, used to do when times got tough. “Dance it out!” she exhorted as David Guetta’s Titanium washed over the crowd. “Remember this feeling!”
“I was very, very, very nervous about it,” says Oh. “I worked really hard.” She had been putting herself into the mindset of 20-year-olds not just worried about their own futures but about the larger picture. “The world is burning!” she says, imagining their dark thoughts. “There’s wars all over! My heart is so heavy, so all I’m going to do is doomscroll.” But, crucially, Oh wanted her audience to find their way to joy – thus the dancing. “Sitting there trying to bear the pain in the world,” she says, neatly summing up the philosophy she shared that day, “will help you figure out how to be in the world.”
