In today’s world, sometimes we just need to sit back, put our feet up, grab a handful of popcorn, watch a movie and laugh. That’s exactly what Sandra Oh and Awkwafina offer with their Hulu television movie, “Quiz Lady.” Yes, Sandra Oh can make you laugh. Out loud. Hard.
Nominated for an outstanding television movie Emmy, their film (which they both star in and produce) is about very different sisters — one a kooky, free spirit who is serious about nothing, the other an obsessive trivia junkie who is serious about everything. The last time Oh earned an Emmy nod was for “Killing Eve,” a very different genre: a spy thriller that included several murders in the most gruesome of ways. That’s what you call a range.
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“I was just thrilled to be able to do a really broad comedy,” Oh says of “Quiz Lady,” which Awkwafina first sent her to gauge her interest. “I would say that the majority of the work that I do is a space that blends drama and comedy. I really like that space, but after ‘Killing Eve,’ which was so dark in places, I really wanted to do something funny. We all want to be sophisticated filmgoers, and many of us are, but I think that a lot of times, at the end of the day, sometimes you just wanna laugh.”
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Oh has always longed to do something physical. And in “Quiz Lady,” she finally gets to. In fact, her first scene has her getting into a rumble with a driver who nearly runs her over while jaywalking.
“When the opportunity came to play with Nora, I was thrilled,” she says, referring to Awkwafina’s real name, Nora Lum. Oh was initially asked to play kooky Jenny, but then producers came back and said, “No, no, no, no, you play Anne,” referring to Awkwafina’s socially awkward introvert. “And then I just thought, ‘Oh, that’s not as interesting to me,’ so I asked Nora and she goes, ‘Yeah, sure. Whatever you wanna do.’” And Oh’s Jenny was born.
The result of them both playing against their usual type makes the film that much funnier. “And honestly, the hair, makeup and wardrobe were key,” says Oh, who got pointers on how to go broad with some direction from an old friend of hers who teaches the art of being a clown.
“In a classic way, Jenny is a clown, but then when working with hair and makeup and wardrobe and wanting her to look like the 40-year-old woman who’s desperately hanging onto a 28 kind of thing, that was also really key,” she says. “I had these platform trainers that informed so much the way that Jenny would walk and the way that she would run. A lot of times it moves from outside-in or inside-out of how you find a character, but [with Jenny], outside-in really informed a lot.”
There are tonal shifts between the sisters, who bicker incessantly because they are polar opposites. Add into the equation a mother who’s on the run from loan sharks because of gambling debt, a beloved pug that gets kidnapped as collateral, a decades-long rift and a secret that finally gets revealed. And it all happens very quickly.
“You go from her throwing a muffin at her sister to really having an argument, then from her storming off and throwing out a juvenile kind of insult. But all still within that energy of the anger,” she says.
The sister dynamic between the two actresses on screen feels genuine because of their strong off-screen bond, which Oh says “deeply continues.”
Nora is very important to me in my life. She is probably one of the most unique people I know,” Oh says. “It’s just the way we laugh together. Just the scenes that we would do very close together. The closer Nora and I were physically together, for me, the funnier they were. Like my favorite sequences are when they’re in the Ben Franklin Inn, getting ready for bed.
“I would just try and make Nora laugh, where I would just be touching her face with my feet, with my toes,” Oh laughs. “That is a very sisterly thing where you get so bodily close to someone and you invade their space. I really felt like we got exactly what it feels like to be a sister and to be sharing a bed with a sister that you’re annoyed with. That’s just the level of truthfulness that I hope to get to.”
