How Sandra Oh found common ground in the moms of 'Turning Red' and 'Umma'

Sandra Oh didn't plan it this way, but she's spent 2022 so far helping Asian American audiences heal at the movies playing mothers learning to loosen up in their love.

In Pixar's animated hit "Turning Red," streaming on Disney+, Oh voices Ming Lee, the overprotective mom of precocious 13-year-old Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) whose coming of age coincides with her out-of-control ability to turn into a giant red panda.

For the horror crowd, Oh also stars in supernatural thriller "Umma" (out now on VOD) as Amanda, a Korean American woman living happily in seclusion with her teenage daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart) on a remote bee farm — until the ghost of her own recently departed mother comes calling.

"I relate very much to both of the daughters who have to emancipate themselves!" said Oh recently in a Zoom chat from her home in Los Angeles. "But the tricky thing is to still be connected to our mothers as no matter what we all do, whether we want to or not, we are so profoundly connected to our parents — even if they are not present in our lives or physically there."

While "Turning Red" and "Umma" tell uniquely distinct tales of mothers learning to understand their daughters — and in turn, themselves — Oh's journeys with the projects overlapped in unexpected ways.

Working with "Umma" debut writer-director Iris K. Shim in 2019, Oh began crafting her character,