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Not long ago, the award-winning actor positioned herself behind a lectern at a diploma awarding in New Hampshire. Her purpose was to offer university-leavers inspirational thoughts during a period of continuous instability. Stepping up to the challenge, she shared personally about her own previous struggles with depression and worry, then made a heartfelt case for welcoming discomfort and kindness. “Enabling us to meet suffering again and again and not lose our compassion,” she emphasized. This was increasingly important, she noted, when many political authorities “claim power through intimidation and oppression.”

Then came the point that would capture global attention. Oh instructed everyone to stand up and do something Cristina Yang used to do when challenges arose. “Shake it off!” she encouraged as a popular track washed over the crowd. “Remember this feeling!”

“The anxiety was overwhelming about it,” Oh admits. “I prepared extensively.” She had been imagining herself into the outlook of young adults not just anxious about their own futures but about the broader world. “Our planet is in crisis!” she says, envisioning their anxious worries. “Violence is rampant! The emotional burden results in constant negative consumption.”

Yet, essentially, Oh wanted her audience to find their way to joy – which inspired the dance. “Sitting there trying to bear the pain,” she says, neatly summing up the philosophy she shared that day, “can guide you toward how to be in the world.”

Currently available T-shirts emblazoned the phrase the actress shared at a televised ceremony: ‘I’m proud of my heritage’

Her address – with its vulnerability and kindness, its consciousness of the world’s injustices while still finding moments of happiness – feels particularly on-brand for the performer. Originating near Canada’s capital to parents who emigrated from Korea, the actor, whose breakthrough roles in acclaimed programs made her the trailblazing artist to win several prestigious honors, has since earned admiration for her strong advocacy of greater inclusion in the entertainment world.

Engaging and lively, her dialogue is filled with plenty of laughs. “Wait please!” is the opening line heard as she chats by phone from the bustling city, buying a moment as she tries and fails to activate her camera. But the performer soon becomes more introspective, inclined toward lengthy silences as she explores everything from the environmental crisis to technology to diversity issues.

Appropriately, the actress’s current work – an independent movie – is about discovering meaning amid the burning. After an world-ending, computer-generated disaster hits Earth in the intentionally picked year of a coming time, civilization has been reorganized. It’s 2040: tranquility has been attained. Offices, computers and handheld technology are artifacts of a damned civilisation. People spend their days engaging with nature. But there are restrictions: they avoid journeys, power is limited and – the main twist – everyone must accept a scheduled end at fifty. The actress embodies a survivor the 2025 catastrophe, who is assisting her offspring into her new job as a “recorder” of these “conclusion” ceremonies.

If your main emotional connection is a device, change is occurring to you at an deep level

“I was most interested in the script’s contemplation of dying,” says the performer, in particular how the knowledge of one’s approaching end would change one’s approach to life. It’s an critically important question, the actress explains, recalling an initial showing last year while environmental emergencies raged across a urban area. It brought home the idea that the film is not really about the future. “This is current reality,” she says. “The crisis is ongoing.”

During the production of the project, the performer suggested the filmmaker to include tech themes in the script. How does she think technology is changing our lives? “Phones and social media,” she says, “alter our nature. If devices become your emotional core, a shift occurs to you at an deep level.”

The way she copes to this retraining – “I’m already struggling, and I didn’t grow up with this technology” – is choosing to do “modest, highly impactful” projects such as this current piece, as well as theatre. She has been performing a classic role in an community space in New York’s Central Park. “I connect with 2,000 people in an public space. You can feel people really want to come to the show to enjoy themselves, be entertained, for it to be joyous, surrounded by greenery. You’re together and you’re communing – through artistic expression.” In the age of the technology, “authentic exchanges become incredibly valuable.”

She frequently discusses making intentional decisions, purposeful selections. “This is the gift of midlife,” says the actor, who has entered her mid-fifties. “Many elements in culture, that you’ve been accepting without thought. But you see that moment of clarity coming through – and realise that’s what you want to pursue. I think that’s what experience is about. And it’s very fulfilling.”

The performer has shared moving past the racism she absorbed from her formative time, recalling a painful memory with an professional when she arrived in a creative center in the past decade. The advisor advised her to leave as there existed few roles for Asian actors there. Decades later, on being offered a landmark script, Oh couldn’t work out which secondary character was intended for her. “Listen,” her agent said. “You’re the star.”

Lately, she has dedicated her substantial platform into stories from the cultural background, participating in major releases, horror projects, and lighthearted stories. She’s also played diverse characters in serious projects and academic series. All these roles, unlike the ones that made her famous, directly address her character’s roots in the script.

“I remember being a prestigious event when a landmark film won big,” she says. “The moment mattered. To create change, you need a wide collective – to get traction, to learn and grow, to know how to support each other. When I started, colleagues like me – we’d been acquainted for ever, but we seldom worked together on a project, because we were always on our own. It’s still a tough industry, often dominated by, honestly, a {patriarchal white mainstream|traditional power structure|established