Sandra Oh is killing it

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Once upon a time, I had crushes on male pop stars. Now I feel mad, florid love for brilliant women. Men still fascinate me, but I’ve heard their stories. I want to sit next to women at dinner parties; it’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Patricia Rozema, Amma Asante and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Emma Thompson and Hannah Gadsby who thrill me, because they connect me to what I think is important. I picture them at work. I fantasize about what they’d be like as friends.

One of my serious crushes is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the actor, writer and director who made a sensation with her limited series Fleabag (watching it is like being smacked across the cheek and kissed on the lips at the same time). She’s currently riding an even bigger wave with Killing Eve, the BBC America smash that finally arrives in Canada, on Bravo, on July 22. Another crush is the person I’m on the phone with, the Canadian actress Sandra Oh, who plays Eve in the series. Both Waller-Bridge and Oh received Emmy nominations last week, for, respectively, writing and lead actress in a dramatic series – and Oh is the first Asian woman to be so nominated. For her, it’s the role of a lifetime; for me, Oh and Eve are everything that is electrifying about women at this moment.

“I love that you now have crushes on women!” Oh exclaims. “Those big, giant crushes we have as a young person – we’re starting to figure out ourselves, and we put all our love and our interest on these outside forces. But when we know who we are, and we move that admiration to really intelligent women who are powerful and confident – that’s terrific.”

We’re on the subject of female relationships because they are at the pounding heart of Killing Eve. Eve Polastri (Oh) is a deskbound MI5 officer who, for whatever reason, hasn’t let herself explore her darker, stronger, more jagged, more compelling self. But it’s there. Eve’s superior Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) sees it; she hires Eve to track down Villanelle (Jodie Comer), an assassin who’s leaving a trail of corpses across Europe. All too soon, Villanelle sees Eve, too, and a luscious game of cat and cat begins.

Sure, there’s a sexual component to their mutual fascination. But here’s where we bless the TV gods that a woman is writing this, because it’s so much more than sexual. “It’s an investigation of female psychology!” Oh says, her voice brimming with happiness. “That is so rare, and for me, there could not be anything juicier. It’s like, ‘Ooh, how do we complete each other? What is it that Villanelle holds that Eve cannot hold herself?’” On the most basic level, Eve represents our Good Woman selves, but she sure is interested in misbehaviour. And remember what happened to the biblical Eve.

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Oh, who was raised in an Ottawa suburb and who turned 47 on Friday, is perfect for Eve because, as an actress, she is depthless (the first definition, unfathomably deep). In everything she’s done – from her early, Genie-winning roles in the Canadian films Double Happiness and Last Night, through her decade-long domination of the TV series Grey’s Anatomy – she has seized and held our attention because she conveys so much. Her characters are sweet, flinty, sexy, innocent, daffy, serious, funny and heartbreaking, all at once. Unfortunately, most of the time (see: Sideways) – and this is true for most actresses, period – we have to soak her in as quickly as we can before she disappears, leaving us wanting a whole other movie/series just about her.

Now, hooray, we have one, and Oh knows it. “I was looking for something that was going to ask everything of me,” she says. “And something that I could feel it was worth it for me to give everything to. It’s very, very hard to find that.”

There’s a richness to all the relationships in Killing Eve – you thrill to hear conversations between friends, co-workers and spouses that feel utterly lived in yet utterly fresh. But the magnetic pull between Eve and Villanelle is something so vivid and so right, it’s hard to describe.

“Because it’s not spelled out, because it’s still mysterious,” Oh says. “It’s extremely truthful in its mystery. Which is tricky, right? But if you’re hitting a correct note, that sound is pure. And if it’s pure, people will hear it. It doesn’t have to be defined.”

Another facet of Eve to which Oh relates: We find the character in midlife, a person who thinks of herself as “normal.” But there’s something she’s stopped investigating. Her fire hasn’t gone out, but she’s not tended to it. “I’m so interested in that!” Oh says. “Where are we in midlife? Have we been tending our fires? Villanelle is such a fiery, unpredictable character, who transgresses with absolutely no remorse, which is fascinating to me as a woman. And it’s fascinating to see Eve be fascinated and not know why.

“Honestly, as a woman?” Oh continues. “Just learning to say no – whatever no means to you, across the gamut of what no means – is a life-long journey. Just like, What is it to say yes? What is it actually to know what your own interest is? At the beginning, Eve is not trusting herself. Not confident. Not speaking up. She puts her passion in her desk drawer. Every so often, she pulls it out and looks at it, but then she sticks it back into the drawer. That, as a starting place for a character, is really interesting.”

Much of Killing Eve’s singularity – what fans have responded to – is what Oh calls its “crackling, unpredictable nature.” For this, she credits Waller-Bridge’s ability to subvert what would normally be the natural progression of a scene. “Let’s say I’m in the middle of a scene with Niko” – Eve’s husband, played by the Irish actor Owen McConnell – “and we’re having an argument,” Oh says. “I feel, dramaturgically, the scene goes A, B, C. But Phoebe would come in and go” – here Oh slips into a perfect, posh British accent – “'Oh, no no no. The scene is not A, B, C. It goes A, F, Z.'”

Oh loved that; she loved being thrown off her initial instincts. “Phoebe knew that I would want to go the fastest way,” Oh says. “But she would say, ‘Actually, take this circuitous route, it will just be more interesting.’”

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(At this point, I also admit to having a fierce crush on Niko, who embodies every languid, shaggy-haired man I swooned over in the 1970s. “Yeah, get in line,” Oh replies. Again, all credit to Waller-Bridge, for knowing what women find attractive.)

Oh lives in L.A., but she returns routinely to drop into Canadian theatre, series and films (most recently, Mina Shum’s Meditation Park). “Canadian relationships fill my heart,” she says. “Right now I’m doing this, and that’s what’s interesting to me. But my relationship to home and the filmmaking scene there, it’s always my first love.”

Based on the rabid reaction to Killing Eve – Season 2 is already under way – Oh will be “doing this” for a while. “I’m happy that there’s no one definition for the show,” Oh says. “Everyone is throwing their own point of view into the pot, coming in excitedly with their take. That makes me feel something is right.”

It asks everything of us. And as with Oh – as with all the women I adore – we want to give it.