Sandra Oh might be invincible: What makes her performance as Debbie Grayson so powerful?

The Canadian actor has built a career playing roles that feel deeply, emotively real. As Invincible’s matriarch Debbie Grayson, motherhood and humanity are her superpowers, and they’ve won her vocal fans. In Brazil for a sprawling pop-culture convention, she sits down with the Herald’s Emma Gleason to talk about why the role resonates with so many people.

Interviewing Hollywood stars on a media junket is nerve-wracking stuff. You get sometimes 10 minutes or less to talk to them, wonder if all the other journalists will be asking the same thing, and actors have their own agenda to push.

Sandra Oh gamely lobs my first question back at me. So, tables turned, how do I think Invincible's multi-dimensional female characters, Oh’s Debbie and Gillian Jacobs’ Eve, have influenced the success of the show, about to enter its third season?

For one, Oh’s character is a rare thing in the superhero genre; she’s a flesh-and-blood human and she’s certainly not relegated to the sidelines or a flashback-rendered back story.

The real estate agent is one of the Prime Video show’s core characters, with a teenage son and estranged husband (both superheroes).

Sandra Oh voices matriarch Debbie Grayson. Photo / Prime Video

Much of her narrative arc explores how she copes with this supernatural world – there are spousal support groups – and parenting her family.

At its essence, the animated series is a family drama, showrunner Robert Kirkman tells me, and it just happens to be about superheroes.

“Good storytelling is good storytelling,” adds Oh. “It will reach and find its audience, or the audience will find it.”

This relatability and familiarity are what give Invincible its grounding, Oh theorises. “Everything is kind of like an allegory.”

Raising a teenage boy – whether they have superhuman powers or not - in the modern world is a real challenge. And sure, he goes off to save the world, but in real life everyone, usually, leaves to make their own way eventually.

“What I think is relatable is that those of us who have children know what that’s like. You have to let them go for them to become their own adults,” Oh says. “You accept the job that you’ve done.”

It’s real stuff. So, too, are marriage breakups. Debbie’s husband Nolan leaves them at the end of season one. “What happens when you’re betrayed? What happens when everything you thought was stable completely destabilises?” ponders Oh. “How do you move on from there?”

Sandra Oh and J.K. Simmons voice the parents of the show's young hero Mark (Steven Yeun). Photo / Prime Video

By the second season, she was welcoming another child into the Grayson family unit – born outside her marriage – and Oh knows the scenario isn’t unfamiliar. “There are a lot of women who’ve had to figure that out.”

Oh’s built a career playing pragmatic women. Her Hollywood CV spans more than three decades, encompassing a broad range of roles and mediums.

Grey’s Anatomy is probably the biggest of them all, making her a household name for her award-winning performance as wonderfully prickly doctor Cristina Yang.

Sandra Oh with co-stars Katherine Heigl, Ellen Pompeo and Justin Chambers on Grey's Anatomy (2005).

Though there have been films – Oscar winners like Sideways, a material-elevating turn in Under The Tuscan Sun – it’s been on the small screen that she’s carved out a niche.

The symbiotic pursuit of Killing Eve resonated with fans and critics alike, with Oh’s performance called a tour de force, netting her more industry accolades.

Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh as Villanelle and Eve Polastri in Killing Eve.

Invincible follows other animated fare (the Prime Video series isn’t her first foray into the genre) like Over the Moon and Raya and the Last Dragon.

Her voice – warm, emotive and just familiar enough – lends itself to the medium. It’s what gives Debbie a particular resonance.

The character has won her a legion of fans. On stage at CCXP Brazil in São Paulo, a sprawling Comicon convention, the audience chanted her name as she graced the stage.

Sandra Oh on stage at CCXP Brazil in São Paulo.

It was enough to move co-star Gillian Jacobs to tears. “Your response to Sandra made me cry,” Jacobs told the crowd. “That was the most overwhelming experience of my life.”

All this for the mother of the show’s protagonist, a role usually relegated to the sidelines of superhero material, if they appear at all. Why the adoration?

“Debbie is the human on our show, and she is the heart. She is the mother,” Oh told the audience.

And while for many superheroes power is strength, might and violence, that’s not Debbie’s power. “Her power is the essential part of being human. Her power is about being a mother; her power is that of being a confident woman. That is the greater power”.

Invincible season three premieres on Prime Video on February 6.

Emma Gleason is the Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and media.