Crisis on campus
Sandra Oh tackles university conflict in a new dramedy that taps into topical issues such as racism.
In Netflix dramedy The Chair, Killing Eve star Sandra Oh plays Dr Ji-Yoon Kim, newly appointed as the first woman to head the English department of Pembroke, a prestigious New England liberal arts college. Kim is worried her promotion may be a hospital pass. There’s a crisis looming, and she has been appointed to take the flak.
“I feel like someone handed me a ticking time bomb because they wanted to make sure a woman was holding it when it explodes,” says her character in the first episode.
Kim is a single mother who is caring for an elderly parent as well as her child, while also trying to figure out her feelings for a colleague, Bill ( Jay Duplass), who is a professor in the department and widowed.
The show was co-created by actress Amanda Peet in her first writing and producing foray. Her husband, David Benioff, and his Game of Thrones co-creator, DB Weiss, are executive producers.
Peet came up with the show after she and Duplass – whose HBO comedy Togetherness she starred in with his brother and co-writer Mark – had some ideas for a movie. One was about a widower and another about a female boss whose employee does something transgressive. They were combined, then Peet sat down to write. Setting a workplace comedy in the world of academia appealed to her for the issues she wanted to explore.
“I have a teenager in my house and my daughter is already having such conversations as, ‘Why do we assign meaning to gender?’ That’s dinner conversation. I felt like academia was a really good place where you could have multigenerational interactions. We could have that friction where you have these young kids who are just becoming adults, then people like us who are in the middle, and then the older generation.”
Peet soon had Oh in mind for the lead role.
“I thought, ‘What actress who’s in her forties, is really sexy and playful, can do a pratfall, is really funny and also can do a romance – has that ability to have that longing – and then can pass as someone who has a PhD?’”
The former Grey’s Anatomy star was easily convinced by Peet’s script.
Oh says, “It was fully formed. I could feel the world and mostly I could feel her voice in it, and what I feel like she was driving at, hidden inside a comedic tone. But that’s also the layered nature of the writing.
“I feel like Ji-Yoon is the closest character to myself that I’ve ever played. There’s something in the way Amanda wrote her. It was like Amanda was writing my own voice.”
J“What I love about it is that it’s a real-deal, middle-aged romance.”
ay Duplass admires the way the show has tapped into the zeitgeist on such issues as racism, ageism and gender politics. But it’s also a romcom with heart.
“What I love about it is that it’s a real-deal, middle-aged romance … to me, it couldn’t be more romantic.
“This courtship is not just about Bill finding his way into Ji-Yoon’s life. It just moves towards a greater, truer sense of intimacy, as opposed to just sexiness. And there is sexiness involved – who’s sexier than Sandra Oh?
“The profound nature of their connection and what their lives could be together is 10 times more romantic than just any sex scene could be.” l
The six-episode first season of The Chair is on Netflix from Friday, August 20.