Sandra Oh admits being "difficult" on Grey's Anatomy, says the show didn't want to examine racial dynamics of Dr. Cristina Yang's interracial relationship

The Daily Beast

Speaking with Kerry Washington for Variety's Actors on Actors issue, Oh admits she fought with Shonda Rhimes and her Grey's writers. “I spent a lot of time with writers, and television is all about your relationship with the writer," she said, according to The Daily Beast. "What I was able to get from Grey’s is to have the responsibility and the relationship with the writer to be able to direct where she’s going...If something kind of came up which was like, ‘That is completely wrong,’ I would go toe-to-toe with Shonda and a lot of the writers, which has been challenging... You have to kind of pick your moments of where you can lay off the gas pedal, because it is such a slog. There would be scenes that I would just go, I don’t know, 10 rounds on, and I know I was difficult. And I really respect all the writers there who rode it out with me.” Oh continued. “But I think ultimately, for the entire product and our relationship, if you’re fighting for the show, if you’re fighting for your character, people can tell that.” Oh also says Grey’s “would not go into race, and that was purposeful" in its early seasons. She thinks Cristina Yang's marriage to Dr. Preston Burke, who is Black, could've produced interesting storylines. "But they didn’t want to touch it, for whatever reason,” Oh says. “Now my interest is much more in bringing that story in.”