The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Shogun’ Episode 6 Recap With Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Jo and Rob return to break down the sixth episode of ‘Shogun.’ They discuss the effective use of flashbacks in this episode, the theatrics behind Toranaga’s political maneuvering, and how the show deftly deploys violence. Along the way, they talk about the growing jealousy that revolves around Blackthorne. Later, they’re joined by ‘Shogun’ series cocreators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo to talk about making sure the humor from the novel translated from the page to the screen, the power of Fuji’s reaction shots, why Toranaga was the perfect role for Hiroyuki Sanada to play, and much more. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Guests: Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am Rob Mahoney. And we are here to talk about Shogun episode six, Ladies of the Willow World. You might have noticed that there's an extra chunky runtime on this podcast episode. And that is because we have nearly an hour of conversation with the co-creators of Shogun, Rachel Kondo, and Justin Marks.

Incredible conversation. Rob, anything you want to say about the conversation to get folks ready for it? I think there's some very important Fuji reaction reveals in that conversation and the foresight around them and the mutual understanding of everyone involved in Shogun from the ground floor up as far as how powerful that was going to be. And we got a great one in this episode, Joe. Maybe the reaction shot of the season so far. Yeah, exactly. Rachel and Justin were amazing.

We only really intended to talk to them for like 20 minutes, but they were just so fascinating. And then I was like, should we cut the interview down? and we both, we all three of us listen to it, we're like, ah, it's just gold. So you're getting the full thing, pretty much. There's a few snips, but you're basically getting the full thing, which means we're going to like sort of slightly speed through this incredible, dense, wonderful episode of television. Maybe not the best week for us to try to cram all this into one pod, but we got to do it. Justin and Rachel hit on some stuff, so you'll get, you know, the full conversation that you want.

And, you know, Rob and I made a promise to each other that if there was anything left over that we didn't get to hit on, we will sort of smuggling into episode seven next week. But that is the plan for today. Rob, have you made another will? What's the latest will and testament that you've drawn up, you know, in advance of this episode? It's a very important one.

We've done our NFL Blackthorn comps, Joe. You assigned me a bit of homework coming up with the NBA comp. I will say, there's not a lot of good physical doppelgangers for Blackthorn in the NBA. So we got to go a little more spiritual, a little more temperament-based comp. And for me, the point guard of the world champion Denver Nuggets, Jamal Murray, is the guy.

Okay. He's brash. He's clever. He knows how to make himself useful. He kind of walks the line between what's best for him and what's best for the greater good as our guy Blackthorn is learning to do perhaps throughout this season. He's also a bit of a human heat check. And he's a guy who shoots his shot.

And what is this episode about? And what is this season about if not Blackthorne shooting his shot with Mariko over and over and over. I'm starting to see it, you know? Plus my guy has aces in crunch time. Like, I think that's an important thing. You know, when he needs to deliver, he's there in the mud, digging Tornaga out. Jamal Murray is your guy. Okay. Kai has waited and says this is an A-plus comp

as far as Kai is concerned. As you know, I know absolutely nothing, but you sound convincing to me. I'll just wait in with a few listener suggestions we got off of this prompt. Adam wrote in to say Bogdanovich. Any thoughts or feelings about that? Which one? Bosian. Is that how you pronounce it?

So there's a Bogdan and a bo-Yon. Bo-Yon. I will say neither of them looks or acts particularly like Blackthorn. So I'm going to say no. Oh, God. I looked up so many pronunciations and I was like,

surely if I just say Bogdanovitch, you don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. Greg says Chandler Parsons. I think this is another like physical comp, but it's really a function of they're just being not enough white guys with beards in the NBA

to even make a good one. So I'm going to say no. Okay. Luke says Joe Inglis. Ingles, no. No, okay. Not even close physically or, although he has a little bit of sass to him in the way that Blackthorne does. So I can see some there, but he's maybe more wry, more self-aware sometimes than Blackthorne is.

Okay, here I really do think I have got the pronations, but we shall see. Sarah gave us the full cast. This was unbelievable, by the way. Sarah's email is quite lengthy. We're not going to go into the whys, even though we could do a whole podcast in this, probably. But for Toranaaga, she says LeBron. How do you feel about that? Definitely.

Like big picture thinker, a little Machiavellian, sees the board. I love it. For Blackthorn, she says, Yokic. Yoketch. It is Yokic. Look, you don't need to know every basketball player. You do need to know Nicola Yokic. It's very important.

This is where Sarah lost me a little bit. Oh, okay. I think Yokich might be the best player in the NBA currently, maybe too good and too cerebral for Blackthorn. Although I hear her explanation in the email. I understand where she's coming from, but I don't know. I see Blackthorners a little bit more of a loose canon at this point. For Mariko, Chris Paul.

Yeah, in some corners, some people might take this as an insult. As a Chris Paul fan is strong, but appreciate her myself. I like this. I like the meticulous nature of both of them. I like the way that comp plays out. So I'm here for Chris Paul. Yabushige Jimmy Butler. This is the one.

Yeah? Tell me why. You know, Sarah talks about the charisma in her blurb, which I think is a very important part of both of them. There's also like a little bit of a trolley quality. Like, I'm willing to burn this whole fucking place down at a moment's notice quality to both of them that's very important. Look, a player who I think is very vital to the NBA landscape

in terms of the personality he brings to the table and a character in Yabushige who, this show can't work without. You know, this is something we talked about with Justin and Rachel. He deserves his own leg of the stool or whatever piece of furniture showgun is. Like, he is vital to propping this thing up. For Omi, she says Jaime Hakez. I don't get it. Okay.

We'll move along. Ishido, Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant is another one I was trying to place, and I had thought about him for Blackthorn, maybe, in the sense that Blackthorne is always trying to leave, and that's kind of Kevin Durant's M.O. He's always, how do I get my ship and get out of here? It's mostly his vibe.

But I can see it with Ishito, too. Like, there is a, I'm going to put on my hat, workman-like quality to both of them. I think the only difference is Kevin Durant came into the NBA as one of the most highly touted prospects in the history of the league and Ashito as we know came up from being a peasant.

So maybe we need an undraft we need an undrafted guy. We're a second rounder to be Ashito, I think. Fuji, your girl Fuji, Damian Lillard. I can't argue with it. Okay. Today I learned that his nickname is Dame. There's a lot of nicknames in this email that I had to parse, but we got there. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you. What this comparison illuminates to me is I need the version of this show or any show where Fuji gets the 30% usage rate that Damian Lillard got on the Portland Trailblazers for most of his career. Just getting shots up every episode. Just Fuji time

all the time. Because that's what we've seen with Dame. And that's really where he's shined. And when you scale him back, he's still very good and as is Fuji, you know, in sparing doses. But I need the high volume Fuji fire hose. That's what I need out of a show. Love it. Buntaro,

Dreymond. Dremont. Okay, this one, you should know as a Bay Area resident. Okay. Dremont is a hard guy to place in the context of Japanese society. Like, everyone is still too mild-mannered

to be a proper Dremont, so I'm going to nix it on those grounds alone. Like, how can you be the explosive element when the most exploding you can do is, like, shooting arrows at a beam when you're kind of slashed? That's pretty explosive. I guess it's all relative.

Kiramatsu, PJ Tucker. Yeah, great role player. The guy you want in your corner and your foxhole is going to ride all night to exhaustion to get you one piece of information because they set all the pigeons on fire? Why did they burn the pigeons? I mean, that was an incredible shot. I loved that shot of the flaming bird. Nagakato, Dangelo Russell. This one's good.

I would pivot to Jordan Poole maybe, you know, like a young guy who is way over his skin. constantly stepping in it and was kind of crowned by circumstance early, but now we're kind of seeing him for who he really is. So I like the Dilo comparison. It shares some DNA there, but I would maybe go Jordan Poole instead.

Delo. Okay, last one at least, Ochiba, started this episode, and Edwards. This is an interesting one because Anthony Edwards has played a villain on screen in Hustle, the Adam Sandler Basketball Scouting movie.

Anthony Edwards is like the athlete villain of that. movie and has like a nice mustache twirling thing going on. Somehow not. Goose? Turns out there's lots of Anthony Edwards is out there. But no, this is a great Oceuba comp. And I think, look, if Anthony Edwards' trajectory through the league

over the next couple of years forecasts Ochiba's trajectory over the back half of this season, we are in a very good and happy place. I'm very excited to see lots more of both of them. I feel like I should just forward this email to like a ringer editor because this is, like, Sarah essentially wrote us like a classic Ringer article, Ringer.com. What a great website. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks to all of you for your MBA comps.

Thanks for Rob Mahoney. I understand 0% of what you just said, but I enjoyed it. Chapter 6, ladies of the will of world, as we heard from Justin and Rachel in the interview that you'll hear in the back half of this episode, they consider sort of 6, 7, and 8 a block. So that's something exciting for us to look forward to. We have not watched Beyond 6. I've not really read the book beyond what's covered in 6, so 7 and 8 are, mystery to me, but I'm curious to think of how they go together. You and I were sort of thinking

four, five, six felt like they went together, but that's not how the creators are thinking about it. This episode is written by Megan Wong and directed by Hiromi Kamata. I want to talk just very quickly, the title, Ladies of the Willow World is not as flexible as broken to the fist was last week when I was talking about all the various interpretations of that. But this is very much an episode about how everyone is performing. We get literal no theater. We also watch a theater of like Oceba, Kiku, Mariko, Blackthorn, perhaps Torinaga, most of all.

And so that's something I definitely want to cover eventually as we sort of hit these main themes. But I want to start as the episode does with the flashbacks because this is something that you and I had been sort of like anticipating, dreading is too strong of word, but just sort of like wondering, waiting for it, how is this going to happen? is going to be deployed. We get a split. And again, Justin and Rachel will go into much more detail about how this was deployed.

But I'm curious to hear from you, Rob, like, how did it work for you? This sort of split flashback over Madiko and Oceba and this sort of like impressionistic version of a memory. Yeah, I think it works because of those things. Like the perspective split helps anchoring it in character helps versus just this is what really happened and showing us like a very cut. and dry portrayal of events. Instead of that, we get flashes of memory and emotion.

We get what clings to us from our childhood. Those kinds of impressionistic moments, as you said. So the fact that we're getting it through the eyes of Mariko and Ochiba, two characters who, to this point in the story, we didn't really know, had any real connection. Yeah. I think illuminates that and makes that very interesting, the idea of seeing them both as young girls and young women.

But also, like, the hyper-focused lens that you get on some of these shots with very blurred backgrounds. It feels fuzzy in a way that I want a flashback to feel fuzzy. Yeah, like especially the shots of them sort of running through the woods together, very we were girls together, the shot of them sort of curled up in bed back to back, all of that. And it's like devastating to think of everything that they've gone through since, how far away they are from those innocent versions of themselves.

There is this moment when Mariko is about to be married off to Buntaro, and she's obviously not excited about that. And Oceba says, we have every privilege. Let us choose to look away from what we cannot control compared to sort of the closing Ochiba sentiment about looking at fate and scratching his eyes out. Like, she no longer had the luxury. And throughout this episode and throughout this story, we are talking about the way in which some of these women are empowered or have found a measure of power. but also the way in which all of that power has to be under the cloak of a man who's in power or hidden behind a man who's in power.

Ochiiba makes her moves in these last two episodes behind and literally in the case of the closing shot behind Ischito. Like that's, and when she and Mariko were young, they were like protected by their powerful fathers or she's protected, Ochiba is protected by her association with the Taiko or protect, are protected by being the heir's mother, all of that protection, and what is ripped from you, what is left, how can you, like,

cobble together your own protection in the aftermath? Yeah, and often what that protection looks like for a character like Ochiba is you have to scurry from the protection of your father to the protection of the Tyco by marrying yourself off and putting yourself in a different circumstance protected by a man. But that scene where she is like almost literally like whispering in Ashito's ear about what he should do and his fate. It was striking to me almost how similar it was to watching Kikku and Omi. It's like this is how women wield power in this space, whether

they're ladies or not. And the way that they get that power is they give birth to someone who's like an heir or put themselves in a position of power that way. They have this kind of behind the scenes influence. And I guess in the case of Ochiba, they bide their time and they wait for their opportunity to claw fate's eyes out because that's that's kind of the luxury that they have is that they can play to the background of these scenes of these moments. And we see throughout this episode, women kind of lurking on the edges of the frame, overhearing conversations, listening in on things, making themselves invisible, but in ways that we know we're going to come back later and pay off whether they are intermediaries or whether they're clawing people's eyes out or whether

they're kind of hatching and plotting their own schemes to be unveiled in kind of slow burn fashion. how the women are seizing power is something that this episode very much has on its mind. Absolutely. And I think it's interesting the adaptive choice they've made around Ocuba because in the book

and in the mini-series that came out in 1980, sort of similar to what we've talked about in terms of Bundaro, where it's like you could have a just like two-dimensional sort of, you know, villainous character.

The, again, I am at this point just reading Pace with episode, so I haven't read to the end, and I don't know the full flower of where the story is going. But, like, the implication for Oshiba in other versions tellings of the story is that she is, like, in love with Toranauga and jealous and, like, mad and spurned. So it's this sort of like a woman spurned sort of motivation, which this is much more interesting, this question of, like, her interpretation that Toranauga is the mover behind her father's death.

What did you make of that, by the way? Because I have to say the way Toranaaga is characterizing different events in this episode, I'm kind of inclined to believe Ojuba's read on it. I think they're both telling a version of the truth. Or aren't we all? I'm both also crafting. They're meant to be such mirrors of each other, and they're both crafting this narrative to suit the ally that they're talking to,

whether it's Ishido or Mariko, like telling them a story that's going to weaponize them. In the book, there's this long letter that Kiri Nocato, who's, Tornaga's wife, who we see in this episode, writes to him about all the goings on. And I won't get into all of that, obviously, but this is the quote about Oceba. She says, bad news is that Lady Oceba is brilliantly spinning her web, promising feasts and titles in court rank to the uncommitted. Torachan is a great pity. She's not your side. On your side, she's a worthy enemy.

So this idea of, like, Ochiba is like, is the only. mind, like, worthy of Torinaga's, like, regard almost in on this chessboard. Like, you thought it was Ashito. It's not. Yeah. It's Oshiva, right? And this idea of her as this, like, you know, again, nefarious spiders spinning her web, compared to meeting her as this, like, young girl who was sort of swept through all these

events and literally drugged and painted and all the things that happens to her in the flashbacks in this episode, I think is, again, just like a. brilliant deepening of a character, an already interesting character, you know. And a deepening of that performance, too. Fumi and Kido, like, there's something so haunting

about her as the fully formed, Ochiba, that when we do get the flashback and she's playing this younger version of herself that just in terms of her facial expressions is completely different. Her affect is completely different. The way she speaks is completely different. Yes.

And so getting to see her at this point in her life, you know, we do get flashback hair for Mariko, you know, classic just like, we're 22 years in the past or 10 years in the past or however many at this point. Same hairstyle, yeah. You know, so it goes. But I loved seeing that contrast in Oceiba, and especially when you get to the end of this episode.

You know, we had a sense of watching Ochiaba and Ishtito interact before. They're like, oh, this is a real player in this game in a way that Ishito is simply not. And the way she kind of, I'll say, like, upstages him at the end and kind of burns him in the counts. Like the very suggestion by her. Play things. You're play things. I mean, she straight up calls them play things, but long before that, even suggesting that they nominate the actor as the other member of the council, like, this is what she

thinks of them, right? Like, you're all just doing your little performance, like, all amongst yourselves. Like, you basically, you've been playing at politics for so long. I don't know if you even know how to get shit done anymore. I love that interpretation. I will say that I learned from the official podcast they listened to this morning that, like, in no theater, N.O.H. Theater, which was, you know, what we were watching this episode, that often, like, lords, warlords were the performers. So, like, that is not necessarily that

he's, like an actor, a lowborn actor or anything like that. No, no, no. This is a lord. But I like, I like your point about, this is all theater. Anyway, politics is theater. So, yeah. I wanted to ask, in terms of that question of Toranaaga and his, I wrote my notes, manipulation question mark of Mariko's father, like another falcon broken to his fist, right? Because we see him say, like, now's not the time. We see whispering. It's definitely Ociba's interpretation that Toranaaga manipulated Mariko's father and pointed him at her father.

And Toranauga also later has this explanation to Mariko about why her father married her off to Buontera. Is this true? It certainly serves his purpose because now she's pointed in the direction he wants to her to be. Yes. You know, something that they said in the official podcast is this idea that Mariko was so aimless.

Like, all she wanted to do was die. That's all she wanted. And now Toranaaga has given her a purpose, which is like your father wanted you to complete your mission. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Install me as the main leader? Question mark. So I don't know.

I don't know how much to believe him in his storytelling here. So what's your, where are you? landing with this story. I thought this was the big piece of substantiating evidence to me, to Ochibah's theory, right? The way that Torinaga is framing the whole situation is, oh, your father had these great plans

for you. He had this elaborate scheme. The way he was framing it made it sound like a slow burning Torinaga plan. And that just makes everyone feel like a piece on the board to him. And we know that he thinks of people that way, even people who are very close to him, even people whose opinion

he trusts or whose loyalty he values, he seems pretty willing to sacrifice almost anybody if it suits his cause. Whatever way the wind blows, you know, he's like, if you're, if you're a falcon who is helpful to me, great. And once you stop being helpful, someone else is in charge of the cannon regiment. Yeah. And we have a lot to dig into as far as Operation Crimson Sky. Yeah. And Toranaga's actual intention. I mean, completely sick. I, I, it sounds very much like a World War II novel my dad would read. Yeah.

And look, I would page turn that thing. Give me that on a flight. I'm going to rip through it. Yeah, yeah. Michael Crimes. But yeah, whether Toranaga, I think he's so canny throughout this episode. Classic denial of the power. I don't want it.

He doesn't want it. Nice, nice Rob, very nice. He doesn't want it. Yeah. He makes sure everyone knows he doesn't want it. And look, I don't know if you want to dig into this stuff. hour later, but I think the way in which he splits the difference between waiting and inaction is very important to his character and very important as far as I can tell to his kind of overall

scheme here. Okay, let me set up an umbrella and then we'll talk about this. Well, we're going to talk about theater right now and performances of all these characters. Theater is a storytelling device in shows is one of my favorite things, be it at the Amber Island players, an avatar. Last year is one of the greatest shows of last year, Blue Eyes Samurai, the best episode, The Tale of the Ronan and the Bride uses this very well. The Provosi Theater Troop in Game of Thrones. Like, whatever it is, I love... Station 11.

Yes, yes. I love a theater moment in a show. But theater as it really sees characters. It's so interesting. And I think, of all of them, Toranaaga is the least obvious and the best actor. But the most important. Because we've been seeing theater from him throughout. We don't even have to go back that far.

Episode 4, The Bit With the Fan. what is that, if not absolute theater? Yeah, when he turns it on, you can really tell. And then the speech he gives, next to the massive burial pit of all the people who died in the landslide, when he says death is the end of having lived, is an affirmation of life itself for all those who lost their lives, their deaths shall not be wasted.

This is another example of him turning a setback into an advantage, like yet again. He's like, he is now using the, like, he's like, oh, shit. Half my men are gone. We saw that on his face. He's like, fuck. But by the time he's giving this speech, he's like, you know what? This is just going to motivate the men who remain to be even better fighters. They're fighting for their fallen comrades.

I have turned this loss into a win for me. And he's soliloquizing. He's caught monologuing. That's what he's doing. And like, this is the theater. So tell me after the like, yes, I did write in my notes, John Snow, I don't want it. After that, talk to me about the Crimson Sky speech and what you want to say about that. I just think there's, you know, we get this exchange earlier in the episode as they're debating

and introducing the idea of Crimson Sky. You know, it's a plan to assault the castle. It fits within Torinaga's plans on plans on plans. Like, this has been sitting in a drawer somewhere waiting for this moment. Yeah. And he has to come out and say out front, I don't want to do this. This isn't my preferred course. He shifts attention to Omi and says like, Omi, what would you do in this situation?

situation. You're very savvy. Lay out, you know, the scene for me here, the landscape. And Omi makes it clear, if you do nothing, then the regents are basically going to vote to impeach you and you're as good as dead anyway. They're going to come after you. Setting this up as a viable alternative where everyone then turns to Toranaaga and he can deflect it. And I think the importance of that deflection is pretty telling to me. To me, he is just waiting for someone to die, waiting for Sugayama in this case to die, waiting for some incident in the council, some pretext to actually do the thing he wants to do, which is Operation Crimson Sky.

But then is Operation Crimson Sky even the full plan is like my constant question, you know? My head is spinning. Because like what could have, if you're full-blown assaulting Osaka, like, what else might you be doing while all eyes are on that, you know? It's so true. It's such a loud diversion if you had some other. ulterior motive or purpose, that would be the time. All right, let's talk about other performers in this episode.

We already talked about Ocuba, but I do want to mention this a really delightful phrase that the episodes director used in the official podcast where she talked about this performance as an emotional strip tease. Oh. Incredible. This idea that the higher born you are, the more clothes you are wearing. And so, like, this idea of talking to this actress who's playing Oceba, about slowly peeling the layers of the onion to give us more and more information

about O'Cba. But the sort of no-esque mask that she wears, the distance that she keeps all of us, and then these various insights that we get from her. The, yeah, the Lady Macbeth, like, vibes coming off are so hard. Very strong. Is she, though? That way that shot was composed is maybe... This is such a good episode.

There's so many good shots. But that is like, that is up there for me in the way this whole episode came together. But even the way Ociba speaks to, there's some characters on this show who are so poetic and so ominous in the way that they talk. And Torinaga is this way. And maybe it is just the most experienced performers are the ones who communicate this way. But she does that too. Like the way she says, some men are born under a banner of greatness and others must claim it. She's just dropping lines like this all over the place in ways that, you know, Ishido is not.

Out here paraphrasing Shakespeare, doing her best. I love it. Okay. Kiku. Kiku means chrysanthemum. There's a number of moments of renaming. Ochiba Nokada is a name given to that character. Kiku is a name given to that character. She's a courtesan. In the book, you learn a lot about the cortisand guild. I love a guild, honestly. And she's a lady of the first class rank. So she's not just a cortisans. She's the first class courtes. She is like top tier creme de la crem courtisan. Guild approved. In terms of theater, Kiku as almost like a script writer for Mariko, right? Like she's writing the lines for Mariko to read. And just as like Mariko has been script writing for everyone all season, this is a moment where someone is writing the lines for her to say,

again, we talked to Justin and Rachel a lot about this scene. It is so key. but I will just say something that we will then talk about later. But the switch from she, as Mariko is translating, to I, Kiku says the people I meet in Japanese, and Monica says the people she meets, and then I offer you relief from this. And then Mariko says, I offer you relief from this. And that shift of pronoun, I gasped. How did you feel about that, Rob?

Honestly, so one of the things we talked about with them is finding the drama in translation. Like so much of the show is translation. How do you make that interesting to watch? And I'm sitting here and I got actual goosebumps from a single discrepancy in subtitle and Mariko's translation. Like what a crazy and powerful thing that is. Yeah, I loved it. Modiguan Blackthorne as performers, this is, again, per the official podcast, the director said that she, the sort of references that she gave to her actors in the scene is she said she made

Cosmo Jarvis rewatch for a means of the day over and over and over and over. which is just a movie or a book, if you read it, a story of two people who just never talk about anything. Anthony Hopkins in the film version plays just like emotionally repressed and constipated Englishmen. There's a great Eddie is a standard routine about it. And then in the mood for love for Mariko. In the mood for love, my favorite movie,

almost famous in the mood for love or like sort of one or two. Wonkar-Wi is just a story of two people who are just like yearning for each other and all they do is walk up and downstairs and buy noodles and like look at each other in the back of taxi cabs and that's like, it's just, and all you want is for them to touch each other.

And then also persona. But for me, watching this scene, watching them have this interaction inside the tea house, I'm not sort of like, I was watching at my desk because I was like taking notes and watching it. And I have not caught myself sort of like leaning closer to the screen in that way.

since I watched Flea Bag season two where I was like, what's gonna happen? For real, though. What was your reaction, Rob? I mean, I was pulled in in exactly the way they want to pull you in. And they really set it up, you know, as Kiku is kind of teaching

the apprentice at the tea shop about the flask and the presence that's felt in absence, right? This whole episode is about the heat in this kind of story and this kind of scene coming from tension, coming from the absence of something or the brushing of a hand.

or the fact that at the end of it, Blackthorn is going in the room in Mariko is not, right? The distance between them is what makes this so watchable. And it's what makes so much of this show so watchable. Like the restraint and what they don't show and what they don't tell is as powerful as anything that they do. And you feel it so keenly throughout this entire sequence of the tea house. We could do it a whole episode just about that portion of this.

The comedy of manners stuff that we've talked about, like the Fuji reaction shots, is like almost, I have written a couple times my notes, but never brought up this idea of, like, in some ways, this is a Jane Austen story. And the reason that Jane Austen comedy of manners works so well is because of the restraint, because of what is not said,

because of the strict rules of society that people are sort of, like, bumping up against and chafing against and the ways in which their personalities bleed out and is what makes those stories so fascinating, all the things that aren't said, all the emotions that are stifled. And so the restraint, and I love that use the word restraint,

because that I think is the exact word. The restraint in both this sequence where in the book, Kiku just spends a long time parading out a series of sex toys and teaching John about sex, and he's like, oh, we English are so repressed. Like, you know, all of that. And it's like, but and they detail.

James. James. James. Come on, man. James having a time. Like detailing anal beads and ivory dildos and all this sort of stuff and what women use them for. And so the fact that they're like,

Rachel and Justin and the rest of them are like, what do we do it a little differently? Much to the... What's the anal bead budget for this episode? Exactly. And I want to swing that back to the restraint on violence in Shogun

because they use it, when they use it, they use it very well. We watch Josen get, you know, half disintegrated by some cat balls. They're not like afraid of violence. But in the book, in this letter from, to Toranaaga about the goings-on at the castle.

She talks, Sugiyama leaving was sort of like a thing that he conspired with Toranauga to resign from the council and to leave. And she says, they tortured Sugiyama's children, then his consort, in front of him, but he still would not abandon you. They were all given bad deaths. His, the final one, was very bad. And so you can imagine what certain showrunners would gleefully think if they saw that passage. This is an opportunity for us to just get really bloody and violent and explicit.

And instead, what we get is this like pan across from above of the bodies, including the bodies of like, you know, women disemboweled. Like, it happens, but we're not watching it. And I'm not like, I don't think I'm terribly squeamish when it comes to violence. I just think it's interesting to note when they're using it and when they're not. And again, that idea of what our imagination can fill in in the absence of explicit. The presence felt in absence here too, right? It is about what you don't show. And it's very clear from the aftermath alone,

even in basically silence, the carnage that has happened here, the violence that has happened here. They do a great job of creating this diorama of death without having to show us how it got there. And I think that's a great way to kind of have your cake and eat it too with this stuff, where you get a sense of how dangerous these characters are,

dangerous the stakes of these moments are, even if you're just a person in the clan, if you're an aide, if you're a woman in support of one of these men, just how dangerous your lot in life can be. These bandits in the forest, Joe, they're a real menace, you know? They're taking out people left and right.

To circle back to the sort of sexless sex scene that we get between John and Monaco on this episode, there's also all this, like, great building up to it. There's a sequence where they're preying on, like, each side of a thin sheet of rice paper, which is so loaded. There's the translation scene with Toranaga

where they're like bickering. I'm sorry where you're going to translate, you know? And how much it bothers her every time he just talks about how he wants to leave and Torana being like, excuse me, you're being so obvious.

They are getting after it in every way you can get after it without actually getting after it. But yeah, shout out Kiku, who is like a real girl's girl, honestly, in all of this. And this idea of the danger and surveillance, something you've raised before, this idea that the walls are paper thin. There's just people everywhere.

There's no privacy except in that bubble of translation, which you've talked about before, which I really loved. But I love this line for the book when Monaco is talking to Kiko and Kiko's trying to say like, hey, man, you're safe here. It's dark here. You can do whatever you want here. And in the book, Madico says the only way to keep a secret is to be alone and whisper it down and empty well at high noon. I mean, that's some in the mood for love shit If I've ever heard it, whisper it into a wall A wall, maybe a crack in a tree

Oh, God. And then Kiku says between sisters, there's no need for Wells, but it's just sort of like, you know, Monaco's like, I don't know you, man, I can't trust you. I would love to. But she ultimately gets it by circling back on something she had mentioned previously, which is only speaking through the words of others with Blackthorn. Kikiku wasn't privy to that exchange,

and yet manages to tap into exactly what Mariko needs in this moment, which is the plausible deniability of being a translator in this space that even in somewhere that's as private as the tea house, they do need a cloak, they do need some secrecy, they do need a veil of some kind. I mean, I just, I can't say enough good things about that sequence and the way it was shot and the way it's framed,

how different it feels from the rest of the show. Even Kiku describing the Willow World as one of the most treasured planes of existence. It feels like they're in a different, dimension from the rest of the season. And the way she walks in, like they're sitting in the room waiting for her. And the way she walks into sort of like the garden that's beyond the door.

Yeah. And you're just sort of like, again, it looks like theater and it is. But it also, yeah, it looks like we're in a different world altogether. And Mariko and John are both warming up to that. Like I love the little fidget that Mariko does with her clothes once Kiku comes out. Right. There's just like a self-consciousness all of a sudden. even for a character who understands the customs of this space.

Also, I like how that is in contrast to Giyoko-san, who is the madam and their negotiation. Oh, my gosh. Guilco means lady luck, which I love. And so, like, her line, I've heard you and the Unchin are never seen a part, and this is where we get the number one of all time Fuji reaction shot. A plus, plus, plus, plus. And I just want to mention that in the book, Kyoko's described as her heart was an act. which I love.

Just great stuff. But let's end with a danger that's simmering in the borders of this episode. And it is the intense jealousy that is whipping up from all number of deadly dudes towards John Blackthorn, right? Because we get the Buntato interaction with Toranaga, which again, a complicating of that character. There is, I don't forgive him for what he did, but I understand the human heart. heart that is sort of beating behind it, you know, that he's like, I thought she would be grateful for this, but she never has been. And, you know, there is this sort of like yearning for connection. And she gives it readily to John Blackthorn, and she's never given it to me. And then our guys,

Omi and Nagakato, which again, Justin and Rachel will talk about, but like Nagakato and Omi both being pissed about the Cannon Regiment thing. And then Omi being pissed about Kikku. Well, also the Cannon Regiment thing. He's also now pretty miffed about that too in a way that this is maybe the first time we've seen Omi lose track of the bigger picture. Where Yabushige has to call his ass out and be like, you're worried about this dude, we're about to die.

Our army got wiped out, and Omi is so miffed about the Cannon Regiment, in addition, and the Kikuku stuff hasn't even happened yet at that point in the episode, that he can't even see straight. I'm worried for John. I mean, I don't know. But all of this feels like Toranaga's So intentional from Toranauga.

Yes. Where he's like, I'm going to use John where I feel like I can use John. And John, by the way, has his eyes on the black ship. I feel like we have to be moving towards an Erasmus versus Blackship naval battle. He certainly would love it. I mean, I don't. It feels like there's too many seeds on the pet breadcrumbs leading that way on the trail. Again, I have not read past this episode.

But Tornaga is using him, but also putting a juicy little target on his back. Yeah. And if something happens to him, him, it won't have been Tornauga that did it. Nope. Guess what? They already learned how to use the cannons. They still have his ship. Not really sure that Blackthorn has a ton of enduring value beyond being the guy who tends to bail Toranauga out of some jams now and again. But whatever test he was, you know, putting Marikotu in this episode, she passed it, I would say,

with flying colors, right? It's sort of like he put her in a crucible and she came out the other side without sort of losing control of her own destiny, without exposing herself to attack. I kind of want to wrap up our conversation with this line that Justin talked about a lot in our interview that is very important he feels to the show, which is, quote, a man can go to war for many reasons, conquest, pride, power, but a woman, dat, that, that is simply at war. This is Mariko's line to Tornaga. How do you feel like that sort of threads throughout this episode or overall throughout the series of what we've seen so far. Yeah, I mean, for this episode in particular, which is very much about the gender politics

of this era and this culture, you can see where all this is coming from. I mean, even in just the way that Toranaga talks to Mariko about her father and that he really wished you or his son. And like, what a thing to say to somebody in this moment after everything that Mariko has been through? Like, you know what, he really wished you would have been a proper heir because he had these great plans for you and all the fuss over Ochiba bearing an air

for the Tycho and what it cost her to even do that. These women are at war constantly and they're being reminded constantly of their place in the order of things of what they can't do, of what they can't be to the point that they really have no choice but to try to pull some

strings and manipulate and find their place in the world through some other means. What else is a woman to do here? Three titles in a row, at least, that are based on fascinating speeches, centerpiece speeches of an episode. And whenever that happens, it just feels like a show

that is so proud of its own writing, even when it's like adapting, like lifting passages from the book. Like just proud of its way with words. Yeah. That knows where the juice is. Yes. Yeah, I agree.

All right, anything else you want to say before we go to Justin and Rachel? I want to circle back one moment to that negotiation scene. Yeah. Which to me, I thought, was another just exceptional piece of this episode for a bunch of different reasons, including like the surge pricing that's apparently going on in the quarters on market. You got the earthquake surcharge. You got the local taxes.

She lost several kimonos of the fire. What are you going to do? I know. Come on. Don't you have a heart? My moment in that exchange was when Giyoko's like, this is such a beautiful lacquerware. And they're like, oh, so sorry we had to put out the shabby shit for you. And she's like, oh, okay.

What a flex. What a move. But even the lack of where like the way that she uses that teacup as punctuation, right? She makes a statement puts it down. Or it's almost like the clock on a speed chess game or something. Yeah, it was amazing. Great sequence. Really well-directed episode.

This is not a director whose work I have seen before as opposed to the last two episodes was a director I was familiar with, but just like really made a case for herself to be watched going forward. Justin and Rachel are co-creators of this show, Rachel Kondo, Justin Marks, a merry couple. So please enjoy the sort of Blackthorn Mariko-esque banter that you get from these two as they talk. Delight, like wonderful conversation. Really great stuff for them. Phone sex, architecture, all kinds of stuff come up in this conversation.

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storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. I wanted to ask you both first about the legacy of this story. Because you have the novel and the miniseries, the cultural footprint for those things is huge. And you can see the influence that they've had on other books and other movies and other shows.

And so when you're making this version of Shogun, how do you go about making a series that's in conversation with that legacy for an audience that's already familiar with everything that's been inspired by it and not have that version feel derivative as a result. I think, you know, we all live in the after effects of the book's impact. And I think that the book's impact is so large at this point that it almost disappeared. You know, it's just it is. And so, you know, way, I think we got lucky because generationally,

seeking were just just beyond the point where, you know, as Justin likes to say, it was the book on our parents' nightstands. Not my parents, but nevertheless. So we just kind of exist in the tidal wave of what happened afterward, but we weren't fully, fully aware or we weren't personally invested in it simply because it had missed us generationally. Yeah. And so, you know, I think our temptation was originally, like before starting, was to say, because, you know, I, like, I think both of us came to the process with our arms kind of crossed from a place of the, not having read the book and the legacy that, not just the book, but also the kind of the shapes that were in our memory from the miniseries that, you know, came out for me the year I was born, you know, and it's like we're all kind of that same ilk. So it wasn't something that I remember watching, right, the miniseries. And so we originally just said, look, we want to do, but when you read the book, it's such a great story that we were like, this is amazing. We want to tell this exact story, but find a way, this is our early words, to invert the gaze, right?

To invert the lens and to sort of tell it from that Japanese perspective. I think quickly early on in the writer's room, we started to realize that's preposterous. like we can't as a bunch of Americans and Westerners, even Asian Americans and white Americans, you know, do this. Like we, we can't possibly successfully just deny our gays and the gaze of the author. But what we could do, and then this became like the magic of it is to subvert that gaze. And to say, look, we know what the expectations are. We know what the kind of the white savior story is and what it looks like. What if we insofar as there is the blackthorn, you know,

leg of the three-legged table, I would say four-legged because Yavishige deserves a place in that. Hell yeah, he does. But five-legged because. Fuji, yes. On reaction shots alone, give her a leg, please. Do you know almost every one of those reaction shots in every cut, including in six, were scripted at some point or not.

Really? Because the writers, like, everyone just loves Fuji. Like, we all felt, I mean, she's great in the book. And then to make even more of her in certain places, you know, but it was like we had to make more of her relative to who the character was, right? And like, you can't just BS more. And so really what it is is, like, so often she felt like, what is that, like, myth, like Cassandra, like, lashed to the mast of the ship. And she can't control its destiny, but she just has to witness all of it and know where it's going. And, I mean, there is like, in episode six was the reaction shot I was waiting for,

so I'm so glad we can talk about it now. But the, yeah, that, what race is over their hands where just the, her body doesn't move. It's like, in body body hands lifting the teacup in front of the mouth was just, like, extraordinary. Like, if you could hear the sound on those dailies when we were doing it, you can just, like, hear video village, like, all of us defying at every single bit of magic that Moaqa Hoshi was doing with it, because it was everything we ever dreamed it. would be subversion of the gaze, like to play, and Cosmo Jarvis was so game for this,

to basically say, we know, you know, what kind of story this is, and then to mess with that. Because I think the book, without getting into spoilers, really does mess with that, especially in the back half. And that became a really fun exercise. He was like using all of the liabilities, culturally speaking, of the book, as like features and not bugs. You know, in a certain way because the book deserves to be treated with, and I mean this, like a great deal of respect. It's like what was truly amazing to us was realizing like we were in the hands of the master's storyteller

and James Clavel, you know, and there's a lot of 1975 stuff that, you know, is 1975 stuff. And it's probably not how he would tell it today, you know, in certain ways, right? But then, you know, obviously that stuff has had a legacy. And so we can't just pretend it doesn't. doesn't exist. Instead, I tried to just have fun with it. On that sort of combination master storyteller and to go back to our girl Fuji, who we love, something that I think a lot of people didn't know about Shogun if they hadn't read the book or seen, maybe even if they had seen

the 1980 miniseries, is how funny it is, both on the page. And then I think really your version really captures that. I was wondering, other than scripting in Fuji reaction shots, like how you went about making sure that humor translated and still we had the sort of drama and devastation and action and all the other things that Shogun is on the page. Every writer's room, you know, there's two versions of the show in every show, right?

Like there's the version of the show that's on screen and then there's the comedy version that gets us through miserable date. You know, that is like... And what I've always found is that the best shows take some of that comedy version and bring it into... and bring it into the text of the show itself.

And so we, you know, like we have Shannon. Shannon Goss, Matt Lambert, and Megan Wong, and Emily Yoshida and Callan Puente. And Rachel and I, like, all of the writers on this show, like, every day was laughter. And I say that not because, oh, we're so exceptional. I say that honestly because we weren't writing and shooting at the same time. That's why you laugh. When you're shooting at the same time, there's no more laughter. It's just tears.

Just tears. It grinded it. Anguish. But we, you know, like everyone I think came to the same place. Like there's some stuff where we love to like, you know, in a loving way, but make fun of them in the book as we go through. And then there's some stuff where we just, you know, really just think it's magical. And then we just build on it and play with it. But it really was important.

You know, I don't think what we were after. I don't think at any point in the room. And we say this as huge fans of Game of Game of We're. but I don't think at any point in the room we were talking about it. And I mean that because it was not the show we were talking about all the time was succession. Like that was the show that was out in its first season and that sort of dry humor like every Monday we were coming in and spent a good three hours talking about that show. And then I think that's the one that sort of blended its way into what we were doing. Because like all of the plot, you know,

magnations, like they kind of work because the book gave it to a with such a strong blueprint. It's the other stuff that became really fun. Like if we're telling a story about agency ultimately and the varying ways that people find agency, a lot of that takes the form in sort of like as a societal comedy and or a satire of certain things. And so, yeah, I think that's where we really try to.

And then we can dial back on comedy, but it's a lot easier to dial back on that stuff than it is to go further. I mean, the fan fiction that the writer's room has written on the relationship, you know, the friendship between Omi and Nagakado, you know, and all these things. Like, it's just stuff that sits off screen. And it's interesting because I feel like what I've seen in the feedback of like, like, Omi as a character is, is the only one in particular that's so insanely different from how we see him as a character. Because we just, we all like love Omi. Yeah.

Like there's like, and there's a version of Omi and maybe it's more from the book that somehow got changed in the way that we shot it. but I don't think so, but it's like, we always talked about like that there's a lot of like BDE in, in Ome's the way that it is. And it's like, and it's cool, right? Like that's what that's what kind of makes him like the man about town, you know, in the village. And kind of out of the village. Yeah.

You know, like, because there's, I don't know, there's stuff in the book. Like, I mean, Joanna, you can, I'm sure speak to when it comes to like Omi's story of like, he's married in the book. He's got a wife. He's married to the second most. beautiful woman in all of Izu. No, in all of Japan. In all Japan. But then he's also

in love with the most beautiful ones in all Japan and Kiku. It's like he couldn't take second. You know, he had to go for first. And like, I think that speaks to something that we feel is in the character on screen, but apparently is missed. I think this was a really good, episode six, a really good Omi episode. Like his reaction to all the

Kikku stuff was really, really, I think, revealing of his character. But I don't think I realize until this very moment how much I need to read like a spec-screw one crazy night with Omi and Nagakado, like out on the town. Their misadventures, like a 24 hours to resolve some crisis. That's what I need.

Absolutely. Yes, let's get the after hours treatment. There was a line because they were just differing COVID problems of the schedule of that scene. I don't think that that scene with Naguato and Omi standing together, watching Blackthrowing leave Kikku's place. I don't think they were in the same frame. I think we shot over them, and it was with body doubles,

but both of them separately, you know, had like tested out and couldn't be there together. But there was a line and we did shoot it. And I think because they weren't there, it didn't work as well. Where after they're watching, you know, and like Kiku gives that last look at Omi and then goes back up and we were going to come back to the two of them and Omi's still staring longingly. And Nagu kind of gives him a and he's like, let's get drunk or something. And that was the thing. And then they were going to go off and do it. and it was like, we never did it.

What could have been? Yeah, it would have been a fun night. But I think it's telling that we're talking about these two characters and we're talking about Fuji. And if anything, this is where, whether using Succession or Game of Thrones as kind of the touch point, these huge casts, these sprawling stories. And I think what's amazing about this show is it never feels unwieldy

and watching it. It never feels like characters are getting left behind. And I'm curious how you two went about mapping out and balancing out the season to accommodate, just like the breadth of everything you need to put on screen with so many different characters. In my memory, you know, in the writer's room, a lot of the approach was kind of the way that one would,

the way we read short stories, right? How you have, you know, the sweeping scale of the human experience, but told through the minutia and told through these, these tiny details of life that move each of our stories along. And that's kind of how I think we approached it in the room, which was these are, you know, these are grand scale sweeping statements about life and death and blah, blah, blah, not to sound like Rodriguez, but and how do you talk about these things?

How do you actually like get your mind around any of these things, not only in your own life in your own culture, but in another culture, right? And so I think that the way to do that always is to kind of get in the weeds with your characters and understand that we can only do this when it feels so, so incredibly personal. Not to, yeah, not to like really make it academic, but welcome to my state. Here comes. Also, this is what we do here. Yeah, I do. You know, my background, I studied architecture in school, you know, and so everything from a.

place of structure comes from that. But there's this great line that we always learned in school. I forget who the architect who said it, but they always talk about, you know, like grand scale buildings or, you know, small scale buildings and stuff. And this architect was like, no, there's only one scale in architecture. It's the human scale. And everything goes from that relative to that human scale. And I think the same is really true in stories, if done well, I think that is always, you know, David Lean, as big as those stories are, you know, the landscape of the human face, is just as big. You know, he really knows how to use a close-up with those anamorphics and just get really right in there.

And we talked a lot about that scale. Also, because we're doing the television show, like frankly, we couldn't afford to do some of the big stuff. So, you know, Jay, our director of the first two episodes, we talked a lot about landscapes of detail, you know, as a means of cost-cutting, but also a means of really getting into the richness and the fabric of the world. And I think that's true of the story. it's true of Clavel's story, that it just, there's only one thing happening at a time in this show because of the nature of the novel, even episode six, which is the most sort of bifurcated ABC story that you might see, you know, at least thus far, they're still all talking about the same thing

is really, and that was for us a big part of the goal, because I think in a lot of shows, it's just easier, frankly, to just sort of split it up and to say, well, all right, this, this story is a siloed thing and it's going in this direction and it doesn't really have to connect to this story and as long as it fills 40 minutes of time and that we're good. Whereas for us, I mean, we really wanted to tell 10, yeah, short stories. Yeah, I mean, where the temptation is to, you know, let's talk about war, let's talk about X, Y, or Z. When in reality, it feels, it felt right to talk about.

Wedgerdo, you know, the gardener. And it felt right to kind of zoom in on that rock. And I don't know. Maybe it's just, it was just a fear of telling the bigger story or not telling it well or not knowing how to tell it that we just had to zoom in on the smaller scale story or the human scale, excuse me, human scale story. Knowing that you have an architectural background helps me better understand some of my favorite shots, recurring shots, of like water dripping off roofs and stuff like that. I love a drippy roof. What does the architecture of this story tell us about the characters

and the overall story you want to tell? We had, Rachel and I had visited, I think, on our first trip together to Japan was 2010. Yeah, together. I had gone before, but I think that was your first. trip there. And we went, I was really keen to visit this temple in the town of Uji that was called the, it's the Beodo and Hall of the Phoenix, I think, is what it sort of goes. And it's this great structure that is basically, you know, stands exactly as it stood since before the events of Shogun,

you know, hundreds and hundreds of years old in the exact same way. And I was so fascinated to see it because of this principle in in Japanese architecture of rebuilding structures, you know, bit for bit as is, you know, over time. So you're looking at these structures and they seem almost new, but they have exactly been that way for a very long time. So there's this combination of like on one level, it seems like you're like coming to a mall that was just built, you know, like, and on another level, realizing that that experience that you have is the same experience that people had 600 years ago when they first walked into this place and it hasn't changed and that there's a mindfulness to the principle of seeing the repairs

that are always being done and watching people doing and thinking like you're in communion with hundreds of years of your own cultural history and so that there's this sense of awareness of the moment and awareness of your small place in the moment and I'm a big like like Stuart Brand, you know, is, is a writer who's like the Long Now Foundation and the whole Earth catalog and he was part of and the Long Now Foundation in particular deals with this 10,000 year clock

that puts our life on the scale of 10,000 years to look to the future. And we really thought like so much of that is in, especially episodes four and five, but this notion of building houses that you can, you know, whip up very quickly, and then they will fall down and you can just put it right back

in exactly the same. same place that they were, which, by the way, now having seen episode six, made our production designer very happy that we could have this earthquake that destroyed Pooch's house. And then, like, the next episode, it looks exactly the same as if you never destroyed it, because it would just go right back up. And it makes it very easy. So, yeah, that was, I just, I was really, whoever wrote that email into you guys, we were really just touched on it. His name was Josh. I remember. Yeah, but like touch by it because I do think that it keys into this crucial difference

and understanding between Blackthorn and Merricko or just the world he's in at that moment, this sort of outsized scale that Blackthorn has for his own place in the world and his own sense of permanence and what he wants to achieve versus, you know, what this world is going to do, which is just going to be around long after him and long after Torinaga and long after everyone else. So like, you know, why do we, why do we think that what we do is permanent, that the roots we put down are actually going to matter? And yet it doesn't distill the role of our actions, you know? In fact, our actions are very important. It's kind of like our journey towards understanding Sepaku early on in the process as a writer's room. You know, I think that there's,

and maybe it's guided a little bit by the focus on it in the book, but this feeling that like this culture seems to be very almost like a pathos, like a fixation on death in some way. And it's not until going down through the five years of making this show with our Japanese crew, cultural advisors, language advisors, historical advisors, to start to understand that it's no, it's a fixation on life, that that's what it is. And the meaning of the actions and our willingness possibly to lay down our life for something we believe in, And that's actually like more life focused than anything that you could find in Western culture at that time. I think Rob's going to let me jump the hue then and ask the Sepaku question that I had for you, which is, you know, this is, as I've mentioned on the show, this is such a faithful adaptation of the book.

But one of a tweak that I've seen a few times now is is around the idea of Sepuku. and I think book readers who are loving the show, they were particularly wondering about chapter 31 where Blackthorn, you know, has this sepuku moment and this rebirth and this huge part of his character. What was, you know, what do you want to say when you remove something like that from the story? Why is that important to you?

Looking back in hindsight, it almost feels as if maybe we as a writer's room weren't ready in the telling of the story, or retelling of the story to say something super meaningful about Sepuku at that point. I mean, I think it would have had to have been in episode four or something like that in our show. And it was almost as if we as a writer's room needed more time to understand what it is we were actually dealing with.

And, you know, I think episode six, Toranauga, written by Megan Wong, Toranaaga's speech to his army about how this is, you know, this is simply the end of having lived. And this is a, you know, death is an affirmation of life itself. And that took us time to understand and to know how to thread into the narrative. I think we're going to be very delicate here because of spoilers. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I think maybe we can talk after the show's done about this. And I think you'll know why. But I think what Rachel says is true that, you know, we, especially that scene in particular of Chapter 31, is a very loaded scene. It's culturally loaded. But we didn't want to be afraid of that.

Like we didn't want to just sort of say, oh, we're not going to, we're not going to touch that as Westerners. But we wanted to be ready and we wanted the story to be ready for those kinds of choices and to deal with it responsibly. And also like to good dramatic purpose, which, you know, I wasn't sure about its placement in the book would be the best way to maybe coily. Well, what all this calls to mind for me is that adapting a book, like this is kind of an act of translation in its own right in choosing what to include and what to

omit and what to reframe and what to soften. After you both have gone through this whole process, adapting Shok and moving all these things around, making all those choices, has your relationship to a character like Mario Co changed it all as a translator in this story, as your understanding of that kind of framework and that kind of mindset changed it all? You know, I think that translation is such an important theme in the book. And we wanted to sort of dig deeper on it and go further. We were, you know, revisiting six just to kind of freshen up on it, you know, before airing. And just like, like, you could like, some of Mary, I didn't realize, like, some of Marikos, like, deflections and translation of just stuff is, is really, like, and I mean

it from a place of, like, Pavelle's writing, just so masterful in what she's able to not say while still saying that she said it and then kind of moving on and not being. disingenuous either. Like, it's almost like sometimes the translator in a story is just protecting the person from themselves, you know, in ways. And, yeah, I think that, like, the, that act in the book is, is similar, you know, that you, that you say with adaptation, because I think it creates a clear sense that the translator matters in these scenes. Like, you know, we, we were a bilingual set when we made this show, you know, every safety meeting, everything that was done. had to be translated, even in some cases when there were, you know, only a few Japanese people

on set that day or, you know, but, but or, and even then, some of them, most were, were bilingual themselves, but we wanted to go through the act of translating, uh, every safety meeting every day, just because it was a, it became like a religion in a certain sense to say, this is what we do here. And this is, this is the spirit that we want to engender on this set, to have an awareness and a mindfulness that there are two languages. And there's no hierarchy, right? Like this is a, the translation is as important as, as, as English speaking. And, you know, it became, it had to be that way. Otherwise, what show are we going to be making?

Yeah, that this is, that this is Shoban and it's not, you know, we didn't want people checking out just because someone was speaking a language that wasn't their own on the day. Because very often, I mean, like our production meetings, mostly on Zoom, you know, are also then, bilingual. And when you, if you've ever sat through, as I'm sure you've had, conversations that are being translated, now imagine that with 20 people on a Hollywood square Zoom, and everyone's just waiting for something to be translated that most of everyone has heard. And I realize, like, we have to, like, reinvent this on screen when we're doing it. That, because I, like, you, what you want in your, in your heart is for translation to, like, disappear. You know, I wish that we could just

telepathically communicate what we're saying to each other. But the fact of the matter is, is that translation is a language like Richard's saying in and of itself. And the process of mediating one language to another is actually action. And so episode one, episode two, like episode two, especially because it's like Blackthorn is like going through in the first couple episodes, like the big boss to the real boss of like the ultimate like translator in Merricko. You know, but like everyone translates differently. and the way everyone translates is an expression of who they are. And so if we're going to do it right, we should see it.

We should really see it. And episode six, I think in some ways is the sort of spiritual culmination of that because there's the Kikku, Merrico, Blackthorn translation scene where she uses the translator. She feeds words into the translator as a means of getting her to say things that she would conceal behind her eightfold fence, let's say, for the first time, you know, to kind of connect that and to like turn the spotlight away from her towards the translator herself for the first time. And to lend her the words, right? And to lend her the pronoun. The move from she to Ives,

like a gasped. It was amazing. As played by Anna Sallai. I mean, she got it. She just, there's that little flicker of her eye where she makes the choice. We were actually so confident and in that choice the first time we shot that scene, we didn't shoot Kiku's coverage at all. Once we call it the eclipse of the Merrico, but once the camera like, and then Kikki disappears, we were like,

then Kikku's gone from the scene and we'll just be Meriko speaking. Turned out that was a huge mistake, and we had to go back and shoot Kikus. It's almost like you forgot in a bad way that Kiku wasn't there. And so we wanted to remind her. And then she just pops out from behind.

Like, here. Yeah, it gives new definition to get a room. Certainly. Well, I do want to talk about that scene, though, and really the whole sequence inside the tea house, because it's our first real introduction to that space, and they have such a specific vibe. Like, it feels unlike anything else we've seen in the show so far. I was wondering if you could walk us through the process of putting that world on screen and capturing the danger and the energy and the allure of that particular space. It's so interesting in this book and show that the most dangerous place,

of all is a place where secrets can exist freely. You know, like, that's the most deadly knife is the one where, like, secrets can be seen in the light of day, you know, for the first real time. And that you feel like these characters have so much to hide that, you know, that that's where the things are at most risk of spilling over. Yeah, we felt as a writer's room strongly that the tea house would be the best place to go

after everything had reached its logical kind of end from 105, where it's like everything is just, it's either violent or what. Like there's no other, you know, choice that can be made. And so, you know, to play that danger in the scene, you know, was really was something that we wanted to do. And Hiromi Kamada, the director of that episode, you know, that was the scene she rehearsed the most

with our cast. And the obvious danger is, you know, even in Hana, the young girl who is switching up the sake, like, what is she listening for? And who is she loyal to? And, you know, that's the obvious danger. But I think for that scene, we really wanted to kind of approach Maraca's inner danger, right, of letting go, of maybe shifting focus, even for an hour. you know, of of not sticking to her plan.

And that was a kind of danger that it's kind of like, oh, how do you tell that story? I mean, how do you do that? How do you talk about these people who, it would be so easy to just even have a stolen something, right? There's no one looking. It's fine. Just go for it.

And that's, that is the danger that you, you show a secret heart for five minutes. Yeah, I'm trying to remember that because it's been so long with the book in that scene. If in the book did she choose to stay? I had a question about this. She doesn't, but there's this, like, more overt where he says to her directly, like, I don't want this. I want you.

And she's like, I belong to you. And she's like, I know, but you have to go. But so they're overtly saying it to each other. And I want to ask you about that, about the decision to then make it stolen glances, the brush of a hand. And like sort of overall your approach. I love that you brought up Succession as an inspiration when everyone's talking about Thrones on your show

because there was that great interview. The show when you were talking about how Casey Blois was like, hey, could you put more sex in Succession? And he's like, come on, can we have? And he's like, no, it's not really our show. And sex is such a huge part of the book and of this show. And, you know, it started, the show started in such a way where I think a lot of people are like,

oh, can you do that on FX? I didn't know. FX is allowed to do that. I was wondering your approach to how you wanted sex in the sexual politics and what to show and what to hold back on

for this telling of Shogun. I mean, we, like, there's sex in the show, right? And there's times where, you know, we do, you know, whatever, the Seinfeld version of good, naked and bad naked. I mean, there's naked, right?

No crouching. Please, no crouching. No opening a jar of pickles. You know, we also, like, it's like the strip teas, you know, that there's something. to us that's just more sexy about what is what is withheld and more on the theme. And, you know, it was always a balance even, you know, because the network really was like,

show what you want to show. Like, there was no push or pull in either direction. And I'm sure they'd be happy if we wanted to show more. They were also supportive of scenes like this where we wanted to show less. You know, the idea that everything comes down to just a touch of the hand, that that would be like the sexiest moment of the whole thing. you know, was really something that honestly was even found in some, I mean, not that we like had on page like a whole love scene. There was there was never that, but it was definitely like, how far should

we go with this? And right, the words in the book were there, but we just felt like, do we really need it? Because we really see it. And also, like, I think, I can't remember it was Megan or Emily, one of them. I'm like, I'm always looking at the table in my memory of like where we were all sitting. And I remember it was coming from like this size. That's Megan. With you guys. So maybe it was, but maybe not, I don't know, but who described the scene as like, it should be like phone sex, you know, with with Kiku, being able to sort of say all the things

that they couldn't, you know, they couldn't like do right now with Buntaro back in the picture and everything else going on and all the danger. And Tornaga might know, oh, my gosh, what would happen. And so it was like, well, here, just enjoy a little phone sex is what you gave them. And then, you know, that sort of graze of the hand at the very end of it was just the affirmation of that there's something real. So I thought it was like really, I don't know, it's probably if it were just me writing the scene,

probably not what would have been written, but fortunately better taste prevailed. I hope it works, simply because it's a little bit of a, it's risky in a different way in the sense that here people think we're going to see one thing when in reality, not only are we not going to show that,

We're going to show the polar opposite of that. And so we'll see if people are moved internally. I suspect they will be. I think so, yeah. Just one thing really quickly, I just want to say I'm obsessed with a camera pan up Mariko over her like nine layers and you're just seeing like so much clothing on her. Start undressing me now because it will take an hour. The logistics involves, you know, it's very complex.

That was part of it. When it came to, you know, love scenes in general, it was just like, please, just nothing during the day when women have all their clothing on because, like, the reset is going to take two hours. On like a house. You can't put that back up really quickly.

Like the Jibon and the Sode and Jukake or the top and, like, all of these layers were just like... The OB-tying. Yeah. We'd be there a while. So we've talked phone sex. We've talked translation. We've talked architecture.

We've got to, this far end, and I don't think we've talked very much about Torinaga, and in particular, Hirouki Sinada is obviously much more than just the star of this show, but he's also the star of this show. And the gravitas and the mystery in his portrayal, I feel like adds

so much and gives us a lot to unpack on the podcast. I'm curious for you to given how much time you spent with these characters, and Rachel in particular, you talked about your first impressions versus seeing actors bring those characters to life. What is it that jumps out to the two of you about the way

Hi Hi Hiro yuki is playing Toronaga. What? You're going to get into spoilers? Oh, no. I will. I will not. I will not. All I'll say is that, you know, when we did the press tour for this show, which was essentially

the month of February, and we kind of had to ultimately start interviews with, if you do have more than one question, do not start with asking us about Hirouki Tanama, because the entire interview will be about his presence, about his brabitas, about his almost just this in this prenatural embodiment of this character. It's so much so that that it's hard to almost separate them out. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, Hirouki has been, he's been an actor since he was four, five years old. And it's, it just seems like he's been barreling throughout time towards this one role only because I feel like this complex of a character

is the only character that can actually tell the story of his talents. I think like this idea of like myths, right? And that in a lot of ways, as far as the Blackhorn story is concerned, there's a subversion of the savior myth that we try to do a lot. I think that having Herosan play Tornaaga is very much a subversion of the kinds of roles he's been playing, at least for the last 20 odd years, within our cinema. That we really, you know, you see him come on screen, whether you know my name or not, you think you know what you're getting with this kind of character. And so much of Tornaugas is about what isn't there on the surface as the book deepens and everything else and the sort of secret heart begins to emerge.

And so I think a challenge of that is, is like we didn't want to feel, and that's what it's so hard in his performance. I'm reminded almost like when we were watching like anatomy of a fall, right? Like so much is like, how do you do? I don't understand how Sandra Healer does that where it's like you're the whole construction of the role is to hold the audience at arms link. And yet you never feel like you're held at arm's link, you know, from her. And I feel the same with him where I feel like I see, I feel for him, even if I don't always. know what's going on inside of his head. But a lot of it that we tried to do, at least in the text,

was to give him enough to, like, rumble about on the surface, that you felt like it was like that. I mean, so much of, like, at least what I felt like is sort of just like his, as like, you know, in my capacity, his EP on the show, feeling like this is just so much of what he's doing is like, like, kind of like in his day-to-day job is just HR. Like, what am I like here? Like, I have this like more to deal with.

And now, like, these two employees are definitely sleeping together. What do I do here? Like, do I call them on it? Do I have to, like, separate them and have a conversation? They're not disclosing it. That really works against our policy here in this plan. You know, like, all of this is, like, sort of what he has to kind of go through. And I think his weariness of it, you know, as time goes on, is something that, like,

hero wears very, very well, and we'll see that also going into the next few episodes. But it was also like, he also embraced some of the things that Clavel had that just we love was like, like, like, Toranooga, like, how he hates horses like so much. Like, just like, he can, and you feel it when you see the world from Toranooga's point of view of like, and if you, you know, shut a show with horses where like, you know, they don't get their marks. They very often throw off their back and they poop everywhere. And it's like, those are, you know, three. things that Toranooga cannot abide by.

You know, like, whereas like a falcon, on the other hand, like that thing, man, you brought a falcon to set, that thing, one take, you know, like that bird that played Tetucco was number one on my call sheet. Like, was the best. And I think it speaks to a guy who really likes to control, you know, I think the sort of, and yet he controls things by very unexpected means because he controls things by basically letting them go and then reading them a little bit. So I don't know.

It's such a mastery that if I were an actor, I would never know how to play the role like he does. But I think it's, you know, to Rachel's point, it's because he's just been playing that role of his whole life. And now he's able to finally subvert it and not just play it for, you know, some of the sort of exoticizing that we do as a culture when it comes to characters who inhabit that armor and those swords and everything else. How many times would I be thinking and thinking?

about the character or in discussion with another writer about it or one of the producers. And then all of a sudden you sit up a little taller and you think, oh my God, he wants me to be thinking like this. Oh my God. You know, like, oh, my God. He's, you know, that, that, I am falling right into his, his wheelhouse here. I mean, it's, it's, I don't know. It's a, it's a character you can, you can watch endlessly.

for what he, you know, does for you visually and also for how he worries you, you know, internally. He definitely does. It's going to be very hard, though, to not see him as an HR professional from now on. Just in the same way, I see Ashido as, like, a glorified notary in a lot of these scenes. Middle management, very tough in the Shogun world.

With no spoilers whatsoever, but there's a moment in the next episode where, you know, it's like he takes a moment, and it's like we've all taken, that moment. I have to get the training videos out again. Oh, my God. Here we go.

All right. I kind of wish we had ended on Toranauga, but I do have one more question for you, which is that something Rob and I've been talking about the last couple episodes was sort of your use of flashback and when you were going to use it and how you're going to deploy it. And we were like a little worried about are we going to get too much flashback? And this was episode six was an episode we loved and the most flashback heavy.

so far. But there's this sort of like impressionistic approach. So flashbacks, one of my favorite sequences is in Ojibah's when you see the sort of the grinding of the herbs and the pupil dilating and you get the whole story even before she tells us later sort of what happened to her in these almost like Edgar Wright, Guy Guy Ritchie flashes of like this happens and this happens and this happens. So I was wondering like how you were thinking about the way in which, you know, people in the are continuously telling stories to each other about what happened.

So it seems impossible to avoid a flashback. So how did you want to use them? Were you at all worried about over-reliance or the parceling it out? Yes. You know, we were, I was, I remember, I know you guys mentioned something about that. And I was like, oh, I wonder what they're going to think of six. You know, because it comes out, it starts to happen. We, you know, it's funny.

it's like, and this is only speaking from my experience on it. I don't know, Rachel, you're disciplined with it. You know, because in prose, obviously, and it doesn't show it in have it to different place in the text. But, you know, on my last show counterpart, we also had a lot of conversations about how and when and when not to flashback. And I personally find that I like withholding it and then now. you know, this feeling of earn it, earn it, earn it, and then finally, like, have something.

And in this case, in six, and we left a lot on the floor, by the way, on the cutting room floor in terms of what we chose to. Yeah, it was less impressionistic. It was, there was an actual narrative thrust to the memories. Yeah, we actually made a strong decision editorially in six to, to bifurcate the points of view of the flashbacks in a way that was not done on the page. and it was for a variety of reasons, but we really wanted, I feel like there's nothing worse than like, you know,

like, what's wrong, Mariko? Your face is looking a little flashbacky. Is there something that you're about to see? And here we're not. You know, like, here we go. Versus just like sometimes you just like hit them out of the cold open and then just sort of find a way in. And, you know, but for flashbacks to be an expression of, you know,

there's a therapist who both Rachel and I once saw who had a great, you know, we forget what we don't want to remember. And I always like love that idea of flashback should feel that way in a certain sense, like that you feel the omissions that sort of exist on the surface. And but what we really wanted to do in six, honestly, and, you know, from the time of the writer's room was to finally do some backfilling of the last like 20 odd years of the history of this world from the point of view of the least powerful people humanly possible, these two little girls. And in that sense, our inspiration, it's interesting, you know, we, and this definitely did not went out, because you're right, we made it a little more sort of like stutter flash and things like that

in the cut, but we were really just like that sequence, the creation of the world sequence and Tree of Life. And Hiromi, directing that, really carried that through to say, like, scale it down to their experience. And then I'm thinking of that incredible moment that I'll never forget on the front lawn in Tree of Life where there's, you have no idea. I think the postman was having maybe like an epileptic event or something. And there's just that carrying the baby away or the toddler away. And you're just with the toddler as he's being carried away. And the postman's in deep focus, which is exactly how that child would remember it, you know, from the lens of adulthood.

And we wanted to sort of use that to sort of establish the limits of the frame of memory. And then, I guess by extension, what we did, because originally that flashback was entirely contained to the teaser. And it was really Oshutla's memory, if I'm not mistaken, right? And we shifted that in post, I think. It was much more both of their memory. but for purposes of pinning a perspective to it and having an actual context in which to understand our present day, you need to do that.

But we had to use it sparingly because I'm thinking, as you guys are talking, I'm thinking about how all the decisions that you have to make in fiction writing when you choose to go back, right? when you choose to deviate from your present day timeline or from the, just the narrative of the story, like there's a whole slew of decisions that you then have to make and be thoughtful about. And so you'll see ultimately why we chose to, you know, we tried to be very measured about when we did it.

And there's a reason why. Yeah, because I think that's what I'll say. There's a reason why. I don't think to this point in the story, it's been clear, and by design, that Mariko and Ochiba have some kind of a destiny, you know, in their own way. And we wanted to feel their gravitational pull towards each other, you know, for the first real time. A lot of that was also at the end of five, you know, the entrance of Oceba back into the story, which is a bit of an invention, if I'm not mistaken, you know, in terms of from the book. And what we want to

wanted to do. In fact, the reference that I always gave with Glee in the writer's room in terms of what, like, this should feel loud. And it should feel like, do you remember when James Earl Jones comes back into the story and coming to America? And like, the score is like explosive. Like he's with the motorcade going through Queens, like showing up and parking in. And it's like, it has to be. Like you watch, because he's been out of the story since the first like 20 minutes and now here he comes. And he's like coming in like a wrecking ball. And it's like you have to feel that scale. And so we were basically like just even with like with Atticus Ross and Leo and Nick Chuba who composed the score, it was like just like, watch that scene and coming to America. Like what is your version of like that? What is that thing? And it was like give us something that just felt like what is did I like sit on the remote and I'm on a different channel or something like what is what has happened here? And it's like because you got to remember her. You know, Philly and Fumi Nakai are playing that role. really does.

Oh, my God. Killer. Another leg on the stool, I think. Oh, come on. Yeah. And just gravitationally, I mean, she's a huge star in Japan, a huge star in Japan. And we really wanted to feel like you've been watching the wrong show to this point, that it's actually, it's like, you know, no, no, no, you're locked in here with her. Like, that's appealing to it.

And so, yeah, she, and that. But I think that's, that's too. Yes. and then we'll both zip our lips because then we're in spoiler territory. No, but I think it also, I remember when we were shooting the girlhood scenes, you know, it really puts you in mind when it came to how little agency these women had from girlhood, right? Like they are, they have a few pleasant moments in which they get to play. And then they're told to get married and then their paths never.

bring them back together until this, this point in time. And it's like, it's that big of a country. And it's not that, you know, heavily populated. But that's how, how deeply their lives are in devotion to, quote unquote, great men, you know. Why did I even bring that up? Maybe I was just trying to not spoil something. It's really so much of it. And, you know, now Ochie was back and she's here to stay, without going too far. I think in the book, if I'm not mistaken, Ochieba was only Corotas like niece or something. And there was a choice made to kind of bring them closer in line so that we could mirror them more closely in terms of that journey of two little girls, if you will. But I think, right, to your point in what we can talk about in six, you can talk about the line that I love so much.

And I say that because I didn't write it. Which line? that, you know, what Merrico is really after, I mean, the sort of the key thing that we actually put on a crew shirt for this show was this notion of that, you know, men can go to war for a variety of reasons, you know, pride, conquest, I'll let you finish the sentence. A woman is simply at war. But I think it speaks in sort of inherent, you know, and even conversations in the writer's room drawn along gender lines where it's like, you know, we found like as men we got to very often

choose what we were mad about, you know, and like going after and that there was this sort of feeling of like, or, you know, that it's just, it's always there, you know, when choice is taken away from you in some form or another on the other side. And we thought that was just a really interesting way. And then to frame that through Ojiba's point of view, when it comes to fate or or Shupume in the language of the show and the things that are sort of like drawn away from you and what would she do and this idea what is the

the gut scratch his eyes out yeah she was told she was told make fate look you in the eye and she's like all right I will I mean she really does have big

wrecking ball energy in this episode like what I would describe as the most agitated shuffle down a hallway that I have ever seen incredible stuff for her. Thank you so much for this chat for this show. I really, really appreciate it. And I'm like obsessed with the show.

It's been so much fun. Yeah. Thank you. All right. That does it for episode six of Shogun. I'm devastated. We only have like four more episodes to go. It's really sad. Please do. Your emails are wonderful, not just on the NBA front.

Wonderful emails. As you heard, like Justin and Rachel are watching and loving your or listening and loving your emails too. So please keep sending them to top knots and man buns at gmail.com. We didn't have a ton of room for emails this week just because we were trying to cram everything in. But we will be back on the email beat for episode seven. We will see you then. Thanks to Kike Rady for his work on this episode and editing the interview.

And we'll see you next week. Bye.