Sandra Oh and Awkwafina Formed a 'Sisterly' Bond Through “Quiz Lady”: 'We Were Speaking Our Own Language' (Exclusive)

"She can understand me and what I'm going through in a very deep way," Awkwafina tells PEOPLE of her costar

Awkwafina caught Sandra Oh’s attention nearly a decade before they teamed up for sister comedy Quiz Lady.

"I remember the very first time I ever saw Nora,” Oh tells PEOPLE of her costar, born Nora Lum. “She was on the cover of this magazine called KoreAm.”

“That was when her rap song 'My Vag' came out,” Oh, 52, continues. “I remember seeing this face of this girl, and I was just like, ‘Who the hell is that?’ and then kind of looking her up and just going, ‘Fantastic.’”

Shortly after the 2013 cover story, the duo met again but they did not join forces until 2021 for an animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon. Still, the full potential of their onscreen chemistry remained unrealized — until Quiz Lady.

Related: Sandra Oh and Awkwafina Reflect on Working with Paul Reubens Before His Death: 'So Special' (Exclusive)

“It's interesting because Raya, we did a lot of that during the pandemic, so we weren't ever really together,” Awkwafina, 35, tells PEOPLE. “Sandra and I had crossed paths and we love each other … I personally always wished for an opportunity like this to work with her.”

In the feel-good flick, Awkwafina and Oh portray polar-opposite sibling duo Anne and Jenny Yum. Anne (a shy, game show-obsessed creature of habit) teams up with Jenny (her flamboyant, impulsive older sister) to save their dog and pay off their mother’s gambling debts.

Awkwafina says she felt “naturally inclined toward a person like Anne," who is far cry from the outgoing characters she normally portrays.

“I've always wanted to play a character like that, because I feel like that,” she says. “I felt like that growing up sometimes, invisible in a way, just fumbling through life and very quiet, too.”

“Mostly, though, I was just really happy to witness how Sandra was embodying Jenny,” she adds of Oh’s chaotic, colorful character. “That was an amazing thing to witness.”

Related: Sandra Oh and Awkwafina on Bonding While Playing Sisters in Quiz Lady: 'It Was So Cool' (Exclusive Video)

While getting into the “sibling pocket,” as Oh puts it, the Grey's Anatomy alum and Crazy Rich Asians star say they developed a sister-like bond off-screen.

"We didn't know each other very well before we started working,” Oh tells PEOPLE. “But we did have a bit of a — because we are also producers on this — longer runway and a much more collaborative runway to create the piece and to be invested in the piece. And that was very much a building process for that relationship as well.”

"It's so cool to talk to Sandra about her experiences in the industry," Awkwafina adds. "She can understand me and what I'm going through in a very deep way. In that way, I feel like it is a sisterly thing."

"You don't meet a lot of people like that in the industry,” she says.

Related: Sandra Oh on Finding Hope and 'Commonality' in Fraught Times: 'We Need to Move Through Fear'

The pair reached peak sibling energy — improvising “exactly how sisters are and how they argue” — during Oh’s favorite scene. The result? About “20 minutes of footage of me putting my foot in [Awkwafina's] face,” she says with a laugh.

Oh got so “in the pocket” with her onscreen sister, she says, that she often forgot her improvised lines right after saying them.

“It was really fluid in that way, Sandra. It felt very smooth,” Awkwafina says, adding that Quiz Lady director Jessica Yu created an atmosphere of “trust” that paved the way for the pair’s sibling-like improvisations.

"It felt so free,” she adds. “It really felt like we were speaking our own language.”

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Quiz Lady is available to stream on Hulu.

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