Dr. Cristina Yang is just a phone call or a text message away in the world of Grey’s Anatomy, but fans haven’t seen Sandra Oh’s character come back to Seattle since her 2014 departure. And it sounds like we won’t see her on the ABC medical drama any time soon.

Oh expressed an openness to playing Cristina again in an interview published earlier this year. But during a live event for the New York Times podcast The Interview on June 12, the actor seemingly shut that door again after co-host Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked whether she’d return to the role.

“What I have noticed — this is 10 years out from leaving the show — is the deep appreciation that I have for the people who appreciate Cristina,” Oh said at the event, per People. “It is that love that has made me go, ‘Oh. The fans really, really, really want it,’ and for the first time, that’s when I started opening up the idea. But for me, I think to really be true to the people who enjoy your work, you have to be true to yourself. So at this point, I don’t think so.”

That reluctance suggests Oh has had a change of heart since when she sat down with Entertainment Weekly for an interview posted online in March.

“For the longest time, it has always been a hard no,” she said of a Grey’s return at the time. “And it’s just… I don’t know. I just don’t know. When you finish something, it’s a deep process… I just cannot tell you … I can’t stress to you enough how consciously I tried to fully process leaving. I don’t feel the need to revisit, but I also profoundly understand the audience’s love for this character, because I’ve seen it for the past 10 years. That’s the part that makes me just go, hmmm.”

Oh also said at the time that she didn’t take the role for granted when she walked away at the end of Season 10. “I knew in my gut that I had done as much as I could,” she said. “I really, really felt I did my job. I also was very, very cognizant that not many actors get to do this: create a full character and really live through their life, and then actually make the choice to come to a close.”

Since leaving the show, Oh has starred in and executive-produced the BBC America spy thriller Killing Eve, for which she got her second Golden Globe Award and six more Emmy Award nominations. She won her first Emmy in 2024 for producing the TV movie Quiz Lady, which she also starred in.

Plus, Oh cohosted the 76th Golden Globe Awards, starred on the TV shows The Chair and The Sympathizer, led the cast of the horror movie Umma, and voiced characters in the animated movies Raya and the Last Dragon and Turning Red.

Coming up, Oh has a voice role in the movie Smurfs, out in theaters on July 18, and an onscreen role in Good Fortune, due for release on October 17.

And she endorses the ways Grey’s Anatomy keeps Cristina in contact with her former Grey Sloan Memorial colleagues. “I am glad for the show to use the character as they see fit. Absolutely,” she told EW. “The character should still be there to service the story — and so, yay!”

Grey’s Anatomy, Season 22, Thursdays, 10/9c, Fall 2025, ABC