Hollywood
Sandra Oh to exit ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
MUMBAI: ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy is losing one of its original and most beloved stars.
Sandra Oh has opted to exit the medical drama from Shonda Rhimes, The Hollywood Reporter has reported.
Oh has played prickly doctor Cristina Yang since the series premiered in 2005 and will exit ABC’s top-rated drama following the completion of its upcoming 10th season. The actress, who was among the stars who signed new two-year deals in May 2012 to return to Grey’s through season 10, instead will pursue other opportunities beyond the series.
“Creatively, I really feel like I gave it my all, and I feel ready to let her go,” an emotional Oh tells THR. “It’s such an interesting thing to play a character for so long and to actually get the sense that she wants to be let go as well. [Cristina] wants to be let go, and I am ready to let her go. We have to start the process, story-wise, for the Grey’s writers to think of why she’s going to go.”
Oh said she first began thinking about wrapping her Grey’s run in May 2012 when what she called the “original six” inked new two-year deals to take them through the 10th season of the series. “I’ve gone through a lot of therapy over this,” she said through tears. “I started thinking about it because I had to prepare myself. I gave myself two years to emotionally let go. At the end of last season, Shonda took me aside and said, ‘What are your thoughts?’ I said, ‘I’m ready.’”
Oh informed her co-stars about her upcoming exit during Tuesday’s table read for the show’s 200th episode and said the decision “doesn’t feel real” yet. “I seriously think I need that much support over processing it over this next year for me to be able to leave fully and leave in a way that I feel like Cristina deserves,” she says, noting that Rhimes has supported her every step of the way. “For the first time, at least for my character, you actually have an endpoint, which in series television you never or very rarely have.”
MUMBAI: Jacques Barreau has spent two decades helping Hollywood speak the world’s languages. From The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, the dubbing specialist at TransPerfect Media has built a career on making stories travel seamlessly across borders. Yet nothing in his global playbook quite prepared him for Mumbai’s streets.
On his first trip to India, Barreau is not sightseeing but sprinting between workshops and conferences, evangelising the craft of localisation. “I’m not enjoying it at all; I’m just working,” he says cheerfully. “Work, work, work. But I’m very happy and excited to share my knowledge. I just have to come back to discover more of India.” For now, India remains largely unseen beyond studios and seminar rooms.
The culture shock, however, has arrived in full force, on the roads.
“What surprises me is how people don’t get killed every day while riding their motorcycles in the traffic,” he says, still sounding incredulous. He has seen congestion in Vietnam, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Mumbai, he insists, is another league. “Everybody is crossing in all directions. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Food, at least, poses no such puzzle. Barreau approaches Indian cuisine the way he approaches dubbing: as variation on a universal theme. “Indian food is just a local variation of world cuisines,” he shrugs. “It’s all the same with different variations. Overall, it’s all good.”
That instinct for finding common structure beneath surface difference runs through his philosophy of sound and storytelling. As a classically trained musician and jazz player, Barreau leans on ideas from The Golden Number, a book on proportion he studied at the conservatory. The same ratios, he argues, shape concertos, paintings and even a snail’s shell. Art, at its core, follows patterns.
“Proportions are very important. They’re very similar across different art forms all over the world,” he says. A concerto has an introduction, development and conclusion; so does a well-built story. The principle travels.
Voice acting, in his view, is no different from music. The task is to grasp the creator’s intent, then reinterpret it without betrayal. “I understand how a character works, then I adapt it to my language, to my culture,” he explains. Indians, Chinese and Italians do the same for their audiences. Local flavour, global skeleton.
Barreau’s mission in India is to pass on that thinking to a new generation of voice talent. The Taj Mahal remains on his wish list, deferred to a future trip. For now, the classroom calls louder than the tourist trail.
He may help films cross borders for a living, but Mumbai has reminded him that some crossings, especially at rush hour, demand more courage than craft.
