Pulling off an undertaking likeShoguninvolved a huge team on every level to ensure accuracy and authenticity.
JUSTIN MARKS: In some ways, we couldnt prepare.
We just had to feel our way through it and learn as we went.
Image via FX
The camera notices those landscapes and you want it to feel sustained and believable.
So, it was actually a lot of the same thing, weirdly enough.
The language, the clothing, the movement, and everything is different.
When a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village, Lord Yoshii Toranaga discovers secrets that could tip the scales of power and devastate his enemies.
Time to brush up on your knowledge, history buffs.
When this came your way, was your immediate response, No, absolutely not?
How did you convince yourselves to take this one?
KONDO: We had two very different responses.
Theres the problematic side of it and the representational side of it that I cant really speak to.
It had a lot of interesting things to say about intersectionality and how we encounter ourselves and other cultures.
It was more interesting for me, but obviously, it was a different experience for Rachel.
KONDO: Justin came at it so humbly.
He came at it with humility in his heart.
Im so familiar with my culture, my people, my background, my heritage.
You would think its pretty obvious, but you come at it pretty naively.
Longer doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Image via FX
What was the moment you realized it was so much bigger than you had realized?
KONDO: I have my answer to that, and Im curious about [Justins].
MARKS: And Im now curious about [Rachels].
[She] never told me [her] moment.
KONDO: Im from the fiction writing world, so I was new to the writers room and collaboration.
Once the room had finished writing the scripts, I felt pretty good.
I was like, We did a great job.
Damn, this is some good writing.
That was very much that moment when I thought, But we did the work.
I thought we asked the questions.
I thought we did it.
And no, we had to actually break it all down again and start over.
That was my moment, too.
KONDO: Oh, really?
I can do my job.
Im going to do this.
We wanted to give it to Mako and have her say, Guys, great job.
You guys did it.
And in truth, we didnt get that.
And that would happen, again and again, as we went through this production process.
This is more appropriate.
This is a cleaner way of saying that.
And we would have to take their word for it.
Sometimes the lines would come back different from what we had written and actually better.
KONDO: They would go through it with the filter of our actors.
It wasnt our words and their performance.
It was almost one and the same.
Jarvis also talks about the realistic depiction of the relationship between John Blackthorne and Lady Mariko.
The way the translation is handled through the season is such an interesting layered experience.
In our case, we could just get the best actors, period, who could speak Japanese.
Some of the actors were so young they had never left their country.
Yuki Kora, who plays Nagakado, had to get a passport to come over.
You just get a whole different kind of energy to the show.
KONDO: But we could do wrong by it, which was the fear.
Thats why we always had to look to the advisers they invited from Japan.
The Japanese wouldnt see the performance that way.
Were flying in someone to tie an obi?
You cant find a YouTube video?
And so, we said, Look, it makes sense what theyre saying.
I dont think we should fly someone in.
Maybe we should just save the money here.
This is what they do for a living.
All those generations of inherited knowledge is what youre denying yourself by denying representation.
It was not just because we want to do right by a culture.
Very often, its actually cheaper and better on screen to do right by it.
Some of it felt shocking because it felt so real.
KONDO: Shocking feels okay because thats what violence should be.
If we are, then it means that youre right in the middle of it.
Its going to come out of nowhere and its going to hit you right in your gut.
KONDO: It will hit you in the heart, and it will take an arm.
MARKS: Unsafe is how we really wanted it to feel, in that sense.
Im glad it delivered on that.
And if people are tuning in to watch it, theyre going to want more of it.
Do you have a plan for that?
Would you ever do another season?
KONDO: It feels unrepeatable.
It feels like it cant be done again.
Maybe its because we threw basically everything that we had at it and it takes some time to replenish.
MARKS: We live on Maui now.
Were chicken farmers with our kids and live out there.
KONDO: In recovery.
I dont know if one repeats that.
It took every part of our soul, and the cast gave themselves to it, too.
Clavell was doing historical fiction, so who knows?
Shogunairs on FX and is available to stream on Hulu.
Check out the trailer:
Watch on Hulu
