The Watch - ‘Shogun’ Finale With Creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Chris and Andy do a quick culture catch-up, featuring Sunday’s surprise ‘Bluey’ episode, "Surprise!," and Taylor Swift’s new double album, before getting into their unfiltered thoughts on the ‘Shogun’ finale (9:30). Then, they speak with ‘Shogun’ creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks about how they approached writing the show, casting Cosmo Jarvis, the finale, and more (25:40). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks Producers: Sasha Ashall and Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, the chairman of the tortured poets department. It's Andy Greenwald. I appreciate you giving me that title. It's in dispute. I was tenured.

Yeah. For a time. For a time. But, you know, times are hot on campus right now. They're hot in the Tortured Poets Department. You fire up some Taylor Swift. Also, hello, Andy. Thanks to Sasha for producing us today.

We have Justin Marks and Rachel Condo, the creative team behind Shogun the finale. We're going to talk about all of this. We're going to talk about all that, but I was just so happy to see my guy. Another surprise, Bluey, an extra 15 Taylor Swift songs. He's in heaven.

I would say my house is very happy. Yeah, a lot of content. The way, the sine wave of culture is arcing towards my children in a way that is unprecedented. I hope they don't get, they don't get used to. You're just in the corner watching the sympathizer.

I mean, it's, if only this, I just had 15 extra episodes. Could really crack it. Yeah, I would say that the concept of too muchness is not really something that kids suffer from. Yeah. I would say. Let me take your question and divide it into two quick sections.

One, surprise Bluey episode, delightful. This is back-to-back watch episodes leading with Bluie. We should. This is important. But even as a connoisseur of the industry, I feel like you would have an opinion about this because everyone was like this massive thing, it's done.

Yeah. They might not be more. It's left us in this very tenuous spot. And then 50th episode of the season drops, a perfect seven-minute banger. And it's a very beautiful, this one got me crying. Are we getting too beautiful? Well.

Is Bluey where you want to cry? Blue is the only place that I cry. Should we conference, Sasha, can we bring my therapist in? Andy's therapist is in the way to-oh. Yeah, my showrunner. No, it was, it did tug at the heartstrings. Spoiler, it ends with a flash forward of an adult blueie. You're kidding me.

No, I am not. An adult blue, isn't blueie a dog? An adult dog. Chris, you have to, you have to, okay, your ticket for entry is understanding that all the people in this world are dogs. Oh, okay. Cool. There are no people. Okay. They're people, but they're dogs. Okay. Dog people. Okay. You are struggling so much with this. Do we, but I'm saying like, do you really want six feet under from Bluey? Well, I, that one was, again, I agree. Like, it's a little like making everyone feel good at the end of the day, but, but this was a nicer

end to the season because I do feel and I feel like I was a little critical last week. If you want to hear me wax poetic about the show, there are other episodes that Chris aren't, the Chris is not on where I could do this. Um, I, I, I, I, I, thought that this was a nice send-off because my guess is my gut feeling is based on no, like, nothing has been reported, but like this, this is the end of the 50 season, seven-minute episode era. Okay. Maybe there'll be more, there'll be a movie or a-

Adult Bluey in Albuquerque making meth for his dog people family. You're on the wrong side of history on this one. I'm not. Okay? I'm not. You're like Moscow Marjorie. You know what I mean? Like, your vote will be recorded here.

The history of global democracy will remember where you were on this day. And then was tortured poets banging all weekend? Well, have you listened? It doesn't bang. I have listened, yes. It burbles. You know, it's, I think there are some nice songs on it. I genuinely, genuinely think we need to go back to physical media.

This is too much. This is just across the board. We have too many options. There's just too much of this. People need limitations for art to be good again. I agree with that. It would be a completely different proposition if she was like, here is a $28 double

disc. Right, like suede sci-fi lullabies? Like Billy Joel's greatest dance. To each their own. The wall, whatever it is. Okay, sure. I don't really have an opinion on it. Like, I get it. I think I really get why it's basically like

it's music MCU. It's like trying to piece together like what she's talking about and what actual day she's referring to and what Maddie did and what Joe didn't do. It's much, much bigger than a collection of songs and the engagement in the fandom is what people, you know, but people used to be more reasonable.

They used to do this with season three of Lost. You know, it's funny you mentioned that, this physical media thing, because it's not physical media, but I got Cindy Lee pilled over the weekend where it was like, probably one of the first times in a long time where there was like a pitchfork rave,

multiple newsletter shout out, this record is the record? Is this the time we can low-key say, pitchfork seems fine? And Cindy Lee. I don't expect to people who lost their jobs, but pitchforks break crushing news. Is this record where it's like a former member of this band, Women, who made a, I think it's a 30-song album of, it basically creates the effect of driving through like a desert and listening to the radio.

But it's all Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, girl group, dream pop songs that sound like they were literally recorded in another universe. Like if you were like, here's a, here's a compilation of found recordings of Girl Group and Brian Wilson's songs. Like, you'd be like, oh, right, I believe that. But it's not streaming, right? It's streaming on YouTube. So you can listen to the entire record and kind of look for the time codes. Or you can go to their website, which is a GeoCity site. That's great.

And download it as a file. And then you pay, it's basically like in rainbows. Like pay what they ask for a certain fee, but you could send whatever. I'm going to check this out. I sent one million dollars. Good for you. Good for you. I thought, right. I want to say, because, you know, I don't want the hate mail that I support the Taylor Swift project. I salute a queen. I don't think anybody is listening to our podcast and it's like we need to get, we need to take Andy down a peg or two because of Taylor Swift. For tons of other reasons. Yeah. And I did want to address that too. But I, and I love my daughter's fandom. It's awesome. But at the same time, the thing that I was saying, like, this is an old guy corner before we get into talking about Shogun, but like,

fandom is not new, and obsessive fandom is not new, and major stars are not new, and I think that's all great. But one thing that I'm really struck by in this iteration of it, 20, 30 years after our teendom, is the fact that it can be so monolithic and self-selecting and siloed. And what I mean by that is, like, when there were giant, giant artists in the 90s, you still had to wait for their song to come on the radio and listen to everything in between, or watch their video on MTV and wait for the old. other video. So you were at least engaging with the opposition. Yeah. In some way. So you were sort of

getting a wide spectrum of things. And my daughters can successfully, and I say this as someone who has been defeated, only listen to Taylor Swift for, I'm going back almost like seven months, basically. We got a little Ariana Grande bubble, a little Olivia Rodrigo droplets on the windshield. But it's like Taylor has them locked up. Yeah. They are like, Taylor is the shot caller and they are in prison. Yeah, there can be, she can do no, she can do no wrong. And I was like, They were like, she can do anything. And I leaned back to the back seat. And I said, except edit, they did not like that, Chris.

Yeah, like if you say, I think this one's a little long or she's been unstuck on the same sound or whatever it is, like, do you, they're just like, get the fuck out. I don't, I don't want to critic it. I don't want to yuck their yum. I do, I was very proud. For this experience. I just, yeah, exactly. Well, they don't listen. No one in my immediate, no one who loves me listens to this podcast.

I was very proud of my older daughter. was like, this is my favorite song on Tortured Poets, and it sounds exactly like Death by a Thousand Cuts. I was like, oh, good, okay, so we're noticing that. Can I make a plug for one other thing before we get into show? Sure you can. You know what I watched some of this weekend? Conan O'Brien must go.

Yeah. I don't know if you, like the rest of the internet, discovered Conan O'Brien 10 days ago, but this comedy show he's got on Max is very funny. Conan O'Brien, the late I host. I think you would have heard. Yeah. I will check it out. Because he went to Norway like us. Yeah, I can't wait.

So Andy and I are both going to Norway next week to participate in the Nordic Media Days conference. Yes. And also to... Viking cosplay. Yeah, Viking cosplay. I just really wanted to see what the Northman was all about. Let's get into Shogun, should we? Yeah, we should.

So we come to the end of this truly glorious everything you can ask for from our television season. This is a, this is for what it is and for, without lack of a better term, a watch show, a hit. A big, fat hit, a sensation of phenomenon on terms of like its critical response. I think it did very well. I think it's something that clearly like the people who made it both the creative team, but the Disney team and the FX team are very proud of. And it will be a force to be reckoned with in the Emmys. and it's been really fun to see Blackthor memes go super-powered or on the internet recently. I know that you, I hope you have points on that.

I was at the forefront of that. You should open up your Twitter, your donation tab so people can give you money for Blackthorn jokes. And I guess I was just let's start from the top down. Like, what did you think of it as a finale as a recently minted finale expert? Oh, thank you. Yes. I also want to say we're about to talk to Justin and Rachel, which is great. Often when we do these pods with creators, we record the interviews first. So there are going to be things that we're going to be working out now that we will probably then bring to them to them. Bring to them. I'm sure they're going to be excited that we've worked it all out before we talk to that. No, but like I don't want to be, I want to just warn that we might be repetitive about some points because these are opinions, then we're going to pose them as questions, perhaps. Although you did warn me that you just, your death poem is a blank Google Doc. So I think that should be kind of interesting, if not profound. My death poem is just a picture of Joelle and B landing off that dunk. I mean, that was the five seconds of being a Philadelphia sports fan. Yeah, that was...

The coolest thing you've ever seen, followed by the dumbest thing you've ever seen. Yeah, followed by just sort of a sick, low-level nausea for quite some time. I loved this finale. I found it to be very beautiful. I thought it... I found it to be like very, I was very pleasantly surprised. And I do want to emphasize surprised by how emotional it was, how demure it was in some ways, and how focused on like interiority and character that it was.

I probably shouldn't be surprised because, as I have said a billion times, and as people, you know, I, the successful shows do not radically change in their final two hours. you kind of want echoes of the beginning of the shows in their ends. And that was certainly here. But I kind of just wanted to start from a place of, and I do want to talk to Justin and Rachel about this too, which was the amount of confidence in your storytelling and the amount of confidence you have from your benefactors

and regents at FX and Disney to do a finale in which the quiet parts are the loud. You do the quiet parts loud, basically. In my notes that I made after, after I believe I wrote down, is Toranaga too devoted to rings culture? The second thing I wrote down was, what a creatively courageous thing to do? Because raise your hand if you thought you were getting a samurai battle. I'm raising my hand. I did.

I am a red-blooded, you know, idiot who's just like, this was really cool, but you guys are going to fight, right? And I should have learned from the way that the show, like, exactly like what you're saying, is like the show has been building towards, like, the entire time that Toranaaga is masterminding this entire season of narrative, basically from a seat far away from the action, would suggest that... He never goes back to Osa. Yeah, but I thought that from the opening flash forward with Blackthorn on his deathbed to the final shot of Toranaga, looking out over what would be a new Japan possibly and possibly his Japan. Yeah.

Was just so breathtaking because it was like, we actually know the story we want to tell. And there may be things that some faction of the audience are expecting. And maybe even just as television viewers were conditioned for blood when it comes to resolution. But we didn't get that. And we got actually a lot of sacrifice. You know what I mean? And I think that they sacrificed maybe as creators. and we can talk to them about this,

the easy layup for a much more elegant play design. Yeah, I think you have to be in your grown-up era to appreciate this show in a way because of what we had come to expect. I think that I did do some, once I finished this episode, I did go back and familiarize myself a little bit more with the tenor of the original miniseries,

which I imagine was also taking its cues from the James Clavel book. and watch some clips from it and sort of and sort of got the sense of what it was. And the finale of being like, this was going to happen now is the book. I mean, it is the original one. So that was baked in.

So in some ways, I think a clumsier adaptation would have built up to a Battle of the Bastards or a hard home or whatever type thing. Yeah, I mean, it's right there in the fantasy that Toranaga has about like what would have happened. Yes. Or what will happen is you could just have the armies turning on Ashito.

Exactly. But the telling of the future to someone who will not see it, which is Yabashige, was very profound. It was very beautiful. And it was helpful for me. And I wonder if other people felt this as well. Because part of my brain that has been poisoned by the last few years of television is when you get to a finale and you start and you do look, I think I said a few weeks ago that I don't look at how much time is left on Shogun. This one I did because I was trying to get a sense of where we were.

Oh, I got got by that too because as the show is kind of, I wouldn't say small stakesing, but I was just like, they're really like not leaving much time for the battle. Yeah, exactly. So it's like as you're feeling the clock ticked down to zero, our modern TV brain is like, oh, they rope adoped us, they're being coy. They put all their chips in a future season basket because they're going to do more of this and, you know, another battle and all these things. It was very reassuring to me, and it helped me reframe my understanding of this finale to

see that, this is actually true to the text and to the original miniseries in a way that works. Now, I still think they probably are going to make more stories in this world, and we'll talk to Justin and Rachel about this, although they won't be able to confirm anything. But knowing that made me feel like there was a really beautiful consistency to the lessons of the show because everything that Mariko is teaching Blackthorn throughout about how to manage your internal life, about how to consider your time on earth, how to ultimately do what he does in this episode and at no point to the filmmakers underline it, which is sit on the edge of your

house and look at the garden in the rain. That's what the show did also. You don't get a lot of shows, I mean, the very successful ones do, that absolutely practice what they preach. Shows get a little jittery on the battlefield or up against it, you know? And they don't all react the way Yabushige did and Shogun did, which is the waves are coming in big. Okay, I guess I'll turn and look at them and take my sword out and do this on my own terms. I don't think whatever they choose to do in the future

will retroactively undo the fact that I thought it was very lovely. So I want to ask you a question about Toranaaga, who was in some ways the protagonist that was promised with this show. I think especially in the early episodes, he looms large as soon as like we kind of get the POV entry of Blackthorn into this world and using him as a way to be introduced to everything. I wouldn't describe him as sidelined,

but he's obviously like isolated for two-thirds of this season. I think once it becomes really about Mariko for a couple of those episodes there. I'm going to borrow a framing that Bill used for Ryan Rizzo last night on his pod for the NBA. Did you see anything in this episode that changed how you felt about Toranauga as a character? Not like whether it was a successful, dramatic execution of a character, but what at the end of this episode did you think about Toranauga that maybe you didn't think going into it?

Well, I thought it's a combination of things. I think that the Hirooki Sonata performance is crucial. I think the entire show, I mean, obviously they think that, because as we've talked about when discussing the show before, they had the rights of the book and they had him, and they did one day of shooting pre-COVID just to make sure they still had both contractually. What I saw in his performance in this episode was loss.

I thought that he evolved his performance and the fact that he was alone on that cliff with Yabashige and then he was just alone on that cliff really underscored the character's own continuing sacrifice. What I was curious about and I think remained relatively opaque was the level of personal ambition and what that even means. It's on his face.

It's suggested. And I think that that leads to the larger conversation that I think we had a little bit on text and I think is worth having. And I imagine some people watching this finale will walk away only wanting to talk about this, which is if you put aside

the beautiful scene work and the character development, you have a finale where the major twists and turns are done via brushstroke and letter at a great distance. That's tough. I mean, the crucial part of the entire episode is that as a negotiation that Mariko conducts off-screen sometime before her death. Yes, but also a negotiation that was ordered by Toranauga or

devised by Tornaga. And, you know, there's that there's that idea that's sort of dropped in there that he'll do it again. He'll destroy a ship again to keep him there because he makes him laugh, but also I guess he makes him ships in this imagined future. ultimately I came down on the side of this was a beautifully consistent show in its aesthetics and its themes and what it was showing us and trying to tell us and teach us. But that eightfold fence is real high. Like there's a lot of hidden stuff.

Yeah. And you could make the argument to me, maybe you want to, or maybe listeners want to, that the show robbed us of some stuff with that commitment to its overall bit. For example, Yabashige's complicity in Mariko's death and his feelings of guilt and his, I don't know if he was just, if he was fully concussed or also just going crazy because of his guilt. Blackthorn never, there's never an Anjin Yabashige let's really have this out moment

after their dynamic was crucial to the first nine episodes of the season. We see it on his face, but his face, and I think this is a correct performance by Cosmo Jarvis, but like kind of understand some of it. He gets the gist of what's going on, but we don't ever have a scene where he's like, you did that. Now, is that austerity or is that

missing some stuff. Where do you land on that? I felt like if you were watching the show that they go to great pains to he's always opening letters. He's got this bird that does his email. Yeah, but then he's just like, go have daughters and may they listen to artists

other than Taylor Swift. He's done because it is accomplished. He like got his, he did what he did. I think the part that I tripped over was Lady Yoshiba's like acquiescence, I guess, or change of heart. But honestly, it would have taken so much bending of the story to be like,

let's get Toranaga and her in the same room together to have it out. Or let's, you know, and then you start to get into in terms of where Blackthorn is, like what he can and can't understand. I really appreciate the fact that they were like, here's this character who is learning a language and is becoming a different person. but he is limited and he is not just going to all of a sudden be fluid in Japanese and understand everything that's going on

and also pick up on all the customs and all of the different cultural differences between Japan and England at the time. So I thought it stuck to its guns and I think if you were watching, you were like, yes, this is a world that communication happens in these sort of, almost in an espionage style fashion in a lot of ways that there are spies,

that there is a concern that spies are around. Now, we could probably go through with like a fine tooth comb and be like, how did Torinaga know this, this, this, this, and this were going to happen? Yeah, I mean, I love the line when Yebushika is like the man who controls the wind and he's like, I don't control it. I just listen to it. I just listen to it. I think the argument that you could make, and I think this is wild, and it speaks to the success of Justin and Rachel and their whole project here is that like you could make the argument that they attempted to do an adaptation that was as beautiful and elliptical as Mariko's poetry. You know, it's open-ended. It's subtle.

you have to fill in a lot of blanks. You might not even get the imagery, even if you kind of get the overall vibe. If anyone had said that to me in a pre-show press tour, I think I would have rolled my eyes. Can I just say that it was really funny when she's like, how do you want to end the poem to the Tyco? To the air.

And like, a boy, that age would be like, farts are good. You know, like. But instead, he's like Dylan Thomas. That's why you're only adopting a nearly grown. Yeah, I want him to be out of that face. Child, yeah, you don't like the word blue. Yeah, I mean, again, like, they thought about what they were showing us in order to get away with what they wanted to get away with.

You know, the episode that spends a lot of time on no theater, like, that's there for a reason in terms of how things are communicated or interpreted or performed. The Ochiba Turn is played almost entirely through two things, right? Her encounter with Mariko. And the poetry. Yeah. and the picking up of the poetry. And the one, basically the line when the, the, um, the Tyco's wife who dies in episode seven or eight. Yeah.

She says Ishido's a peasant. Yeah. Right. Now, in my deep morning Googling, I was like, that, that is a major point, I think, in the, in the book, as well as in some of the historical figure. That he's an outsider trying to, like, aspire to being aristocracy. Whereas Tornaga is from a long line. As a boy was like you're the warlord. You're the guy.

And then even before that and stuff that's not in the show is from a long family of leaders and rulers and noble people. So that's doing a lot with a little. Yeah. But it's, you know, this is a unique one for us because I think that we often have received shows that we've, even shows that we love, we sometimes quibble. Like Mr. Mrs. Smith was like this too, which is where we were saying, you know, I wish, okay, but I kind of wish there was a little, maybe a little more here or midway through. I wasn't sure where we were headed. This one, you know, it was very, very, very consistent and very beautifully paced, but was surprising up to the very end. And if you'd read the book or seen the original, you wouldn't have been surprised. But like, the fact that Crimson Sky was her

walking into that castle and not coming out of it, like that is Joe Pesci, you were serious about that. Yeah. Like that is, oh, that wasn't a trick. That was Crimson Sky. Yeah. He did. He's like, I did something with one woman that most people couldn't do. with an army. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Were you sad about Yabashige? I thought it was an appropriate ending.

I mean, it was definitely a little bit like the end of the crime novel where like the killer tells the guy like everything, you know? But in this case, the killer and the guy were friends. And he's also like, and now you die. So all that stuff dies with you. And also he was like, please, please, please, sir, feed me to angry dogs. Underrated scene. All right.

We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

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Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. Andy and I are so, so happy to be joined by the creative team behind Shogun, one of our favorite shows of the year, if not our favorite show of the year. Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, thank you for joining the watch. Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. Guys, I do have a lot of questions about your stray cats and your life on the Volcanoes of Hawaii, but we'll save those maybe for the end of the interview since I know your time is precious. And so congratulations on the show. We loved it. I've sort of a large question to start with, specifically about the finale before we,

open it up to talk to you more about the whole process of development, since people listening probably will have just watched. So I felt like throughout the run of the series, the audience was educated on a lot of particularly Japanese sensibilities, like on subjects like subtlety and how to suppress emotions correctly, the individual versus the collective. And what really struck me about this beautiful episode was that you chose to incorporate a lot of Blackthorne's lessons into the episode itself. Chris and I were just talking about it and I was saying, like, this is the rare finale that let the quiet parts be loud. And I wonder if you could discuss the conversation. that led you to this point, both from a practical level,

like how much story you had left to tell and how many battles could you conceivably shoot, but also from a confidence level within the two, between the two of you and then even from your own Council of Regents at FX and Disney. Yeah. You know, I think it starts with the book, right?

And this was always, at least by this, I mean not going to Sekigahara, not seeing the actual battle, was always where, what surprised us in a really interesting way about the book, because it felt like between crimson sky and just the sort of traditional shape of how these stories work, you know, when you're reading the book, you're like,

this is what we're owed, this is what we expect. And then Clevel gets you to the ending, and he's just like, oh yeah, well, if you thought that was coming, you weren't really paying attention, were you? And we were really just left with that. I mean, there's so many things in the last couple hundred pages that you're left with, including Mariko's death and all this, you know, other heartbreak. But that was the biggest impact, at least speaking from myself.

We were just joking in the last couple weeks. Like we always, you know, as you do when you make a show, you always have like, oh, you know, the people you're working with like, you're this person and you're this person and I'm this person and, you know, you're sort of going through. And we were always like, they should guess. Who are you? I'm Keri. Yeah.

But it was always, you know, who's Blackthorn? Like we never had anyone who is like, who's Blackthorn in the show and the crew who's like making it and stuff? And then we finally realized it's like, oh, the audience is Blackthorn. And I think that as readers, as viewers, like that's what you really come to is this feeling of like everything that we go through hopefully watching the show. And I say it because I experienced it the first time as a reader of the book, we just put Blackthorn through. And if to some extent, I think he's frustrated at the end because he didn't get what he wanted,

but then he got exactly what he wanted. I hope when it comes to, you know, what LeBell is sending the audience through. So, yeah, I think that was a really important part of the story is to sort of put Blackburn's grow up through there. The only other thing is the moving of the faux-puku, the faux-sepuku moment of Black Clarenage, which if you want to speak to. Well, okay, so we, so initially in the book, Blackthorn attempts Sepuku in what would be around episode four. Okay.

And it felt, I remember, well, we were all in the writers' room trying to approach that subject matter. And it felt so early on. and it felt really, really slippery to us. Like we didn't quite have a handle on it, not that we ever could, but we knew that we could never quite have a handle on it. And so we just kind of tabled it and said,

we don't know if it'll come back later. We understand that that's a very clear example of his transformation, of his giving over to cultural insights and experiences. And we just, we didn't say we were going to have it in episode 10. We just said, we don't know. We don't know if we can ever do this justice. And so we just waited and waited. And it only made sense at the very tail end.

Yeah. I think it was, we were very conflicted about, you know, this sort of European character committing this very culturally specific act in the way that he does. And to do it, if we were going to do it, all I could say at the time was like, well, it's not going to be in episode four. You know, it just doesn't, I don't believe it. And then the journey for us was like, can we get ourselves to believe it at some point? You know, like, can we sort of, you know, it was sorry for these movie analogies, but it's like, you know, it's like Peewe's big adventure when he's saving all the pets and the pet shop.

You know, and he keeps like running past the snake tank and being like, yeah. And then at the end, he finally grabs the snakes and runs out. I think that was us with with the Sepaku for Blackthorn. And it was like, and in the end, I think if we. hadn't done it, I don't know if Blackburn finally got there. You know, so I'm really glad for that journey. You know, it was, it was a lot of naval gazing. Well, and also, it didn't feel right then because it could never, he could never be Japanese. He could never perform this ritual ceremony in a way that is completely Japanese. And so it made sense where we managed to

to find it, uh, or where it managed to land, because I think it came on the heels of, well, obviously it came on the heels of, of, of Mariko's death. And so there's kind of a, a blend of, um, I, I want to, um, you know, say something with my death, but also, uh, I'm fucking broken. Like this is, this is, I don't know. I don't know what else to do. So there's like a, he could never, like the production itself. We could never be Japanese. We could never be fully Western. It's interesting because he doesn't, in my opinion, hearing this, it's really interesting because I imagine the moment you're talking about in episode four is related to the death of the gardener. Is that where he's stressed in the book and taking some of it? There's other

violence in the... In the book, this moment actually happens right after they arrive in Nijero coming back from Ozaka and Tornaga leaves. And I believe in the book, it's like, oh, you know, Blackthorn has to learn Japanese. And if he does, the whole village is going to die. And Blackthorn is like, well, this is ridiculous. Why should their lives be pinned to me? And he goes through this, you know, protest in front of Yabushige with Mariko translating for him where, you know, he's got the blade right there.

And I think it's only who finally punches him in the face. And he's like, what is going on? And it just, and then from that point, they sort of everyone in the village treats him as one of their own. And I just, yeah. And it just felt, you know, I think. so much of the story, and it's not to, you know, I think part of what makes Shogun really fascinating to me is how we think we know what that book is because of all the tropes that it has inspired over the last several decades in our culture. You know, but if you look to the book, it actually was surprisingly forward thinking. But then there are some aspects that I think you look at and you're like, well, yeah, I can see why this doesn't really play outside of 1975. Well, the one that you're pointing to there makes so much sense because the way it works in the finale, his actions tell us everything about his journey,

but don't affect Torinaga at all, which I think is in some ways the delicate dance you guys did throughout the adaptation, right? That these events were happening in ways that might be inscrutable to the audience or this character, but the dramatic journey is within this guy

who's experiencing it. Yeah, I mean, that sense, like the Tornaga, like, kind of the comment that he makes about, well, I'll just have to burn his ships again. You know, he basically has him on this, he's got him on a string. Yeah, he's got him on a string.

But it doesn't, it in no way dilutes the importance of their moments together. Like their relationship still seems sincere, even if Toranaga's motivations are somewhat obscured, which kind of leads me to my question. I imagine in adapting a huge piece of fiction like this, that you encounter this weird divide where you're like, as a reader, it makes sense. Like you're reading, you're reading this book and you're like, yeah, right. fiction, I have insight into what people are thinking and I have insight into history or, you know, somebody can just, you know, you can easily like build in 20 years of somebody's life into a chapter of a book and then you have complete understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. You guys don't have that luxury, right? Like, not only because there's budgetary limitations,

but there's simply just perception limitations and you can't tell what somebody's thinking. And so much of this episode hinges on things like correspondence between two characters or things that people are thinking. Poetry criticism. Poetry. Exactly. We got like, it's like an issue of plowshares over here, you know?

And so I was wondering, um, I was wondering if, what were some of the challenges in making televised drama out of something where you've essentially got this central character in Toranooga who's just like I have, it's all in my head. It's very opaque. And it is very opaque.

And then a lot of like the finale, I thought brilliantly hinges on things that are off screen. things that are in letters, things that are not going to be obvious to, and I admitted this, I was like, right? So now, now I get a battle, right? Like, I did my time, right? Like, we're going to fight now, right? Like, and, yeah, I know, I did, there was a feeling. And then actually, I think the sensation of the finale was increased by the fact that it wasn't what I thought I was quote unquote owed. Yeah, I mean, there's some of it.

sensational disappointment? No, sensational. Like, I was just so thrilled by it because I was like, what a, what a gutsy thing to do to just be like, this, this might happen soon. But if it does, here's how, like, here's how I've, I've already thought of that, you know? But yeah, I thought it was brilliant. Yeah, thank you. Right.

It's like, the show is about the secret heart, right? And it's about sort of, you know, which the secret heart works pretty nicely in a book because it can just be the aside to the readers. in some way, and Clevel toys with it with Toranauga all the time in ways that we cannot where he's gaming out different scenarios of like, what if this happens

and then this happens and then this, but you know, or it could be like this and you're seeing that throughout the book, right? We, to speak to inner monologue and its opportunities in television, you know, we had a challenge that the last couple pages is Toranauga finally like opening up his heart to the reader and only the reader.

And then musing aloud about all these things that he talks about in those final moments. But we never, you know, how do you privilege the audience there? I believe if I'm not mistaken, the original miniseries had Orson Wells tell us everything that was going on in Mifune's. More shows should do that. Yeah. It can use the AI voice. It's like the voiceover. They should, yeah, Orson Wells could totally have an AI voice now, right?

Where they just take. But like the fish sticks, Orson Wells, you know, you're doing that version. I was kind of disappointed that you guys didn't do a Blackthorn voiceover of record scratch. Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I wound up on my deathbed. The true in media res, like we started right there. You know, but we had this great, like, so Yavishige dies in the book, I believe he seconded by only. Only.

Yeah, and we thought, oh, Torinaga's got to do that. And then that's it. He could whisper it into the well. and speak it to the one guy who shares a lot of traits with Blackthorn and that he thinks he's owed things and gets things right away. And so, Yavishige can be the audience and let's just have Tornaga tell them. But we have a lot of different shapes for that speech on the page, including we went full 25th hour with it at one point. Oh, wow. Just like, let's go all the way and all the way to like, let's turn Edo into Tokyo.

You know, like let's do the bugsy ending, so to speak. see it and you kind of come back to this, you know, just the sound of the wind and two men sitting on that cliff and stuff. And it just felt a little indulgent, I think, and not just financially. You know, but indulgent to like, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that, you know, the sort of characters we care about and everything that they lived and died for comes to this. and, you know, that's the dream of a dream, you know, of Tornaga's future. I don't know. It's, I mean, maybe you from a fiction point of view can speak more to the...

Yeah, I'm listening to these excellent questions and his answer. I'm really struck by how I don't know how any of it came to be. Like, for me, for me, you know, Justin comes at it, you know, with a lot of experience. and he, you know, king of structure, understands architecture, both literally and script-wise. And I just write short stories. So I don't really, I didn't really know how to do anything other than just like one word after the other. And I hope it doesn't sound, you know, like falsely humble. It's just true.

Like, I don't, it's hard to know how to talk about it in the aftermath because when you're just in the weeds, you're just thinking about okay, so I want to get to this feeling, right, where it feels both surprising and inevitable, because that is, that is the backbone of, of story. And, and how do you do that? And just for me, from a story standpoint, what was most important was trying to find the callbacks, right? The callbacks to Fuji saying, you know, let, let your hands be the last to hold her. That was what was said to her when we first started in episode one. It was a merit of those words to her about, yeah. And then, you know, why tell a dead man the future, all these callbacks that made it feel

very complete somehow, but also hopefully leaving you a bit like, wow, that surprised me. But I also, if I may, Annie, you know, you have your great show that's, you know, the stick the landing show. And I think a lot about endings, you know, when it comes to TV, is even like miniseries or limited series, sure, but even long-form TV, right? And like the Sopranos ending, which, you know, any complaints in the moment that anyone can add, you know, are, it doesn't matter because we all, we're still talking about that, you know. And since this is audio, we laugh because it appears Rachel didn't want to be spoiled

on the finale of the Spranos. Yeah, no. I haven't seen the last episode. She is really just like has been writing that long. The Orson Well's voiceover at the end. was shocking, but really worked aesthetically. It's a great way out of any conversation. It's like, oh, you're talking about the soprano's ending.

Well, I'm going to go leave now. But no, the, you know, this, like, what is it that sticks with us? And for me, like, it's one of the most iconic images in the history of cinema or television is that just slightly vaguely indifferent look of Tony lifting his eyes and looking towards the door, right? And what comes or what doesn't is just what echoes in our head. And, you know, we really wanted the echo of this show to be the last look between two men and nothing else. Just Blackthorn and Tornaga kind of both having that moment together.

And as Blackthorn walks away and then Tornaga turns from him to the horizon. But unlike Blackthorne's horizon, which was flat and infinite, Tornaugga is looking towards hills and mountains and vision. And that was it. And so we just always chase that. You know, we knew that from the very beginning. You have a luxury of a book. But we just always said, how are we going to get there? That's how this podcast is going to end, too, just between these two men.

But Rachel, I want to go back to your answer, which I love because I had written down a question about, I had a lot of questions about process, but a lot of them kept coming down to pace. Because during the course of the season, I was complimenting you guys constantly about how this is one of the best paste shows that I can remember. And I really did wonder how much of that came from Justin's screenwriting background for movies, how much of that may have come from your background, Rachel, writing fiction, a collision between the two. To put actually something more practical on the question and not to cause marital discord, I wondered about how the two of you with your writers navigated forest and trees, basically. Like what was more challenging for you guys on a practical level? the forest, which would be like,

we have this much story to tell, we have to travel this far, we have 10 episodes to do it, or is it the trees? Like what you wanted to do in different scenes, the things you wanted to move around in order to accomplish, the things that you felt were important to accomplish. You are the trees, I am the forest.

There it is. That sounds like a death poem, guys. Not to make it dark. That's beautiful. Death of our marriage. No, we wrote episodes one and two together and then obviously our writer's room, you know, broke everything and and wrote the rest of the season. And I don't know. This was, this was a lot of fighting. I mean, we, I, you know, I, again, I had to have all my descriptions in there. I thought it was so important to have the right descriptions and the right punctuations. And Justin, you know, I would just throw up his hands and say,

it's going to change a million times. But I think that. that for me, speaking for just me, I really zeroed in on the small stories, like the story of Uwajido, the gardener. Those were the things. And maybe it was just because those felt a little bit more manageable in the telling of it. But I felt like those stories, the tinier stories were the garland that you could kind of hang the story on, so to speak, and move it that way. So that was kind of my focus, whereas Justin was obviously a little bit more like, how can we make the show? How can any of this happen?

Yeah, I think something I learned from Rachel in this process that is different from maybe, you know, everyone always talks about these, like, oh, we're 10-hour movies and this and that. And it's like, I think it's such nonsense in the case of Shogun especially, because it's really 10 short stories. You know, that's what this is and the way that we as a room structure. it to say that these episodes really do have to have a beginning, middle, and then, and a truly unified theme and idea. You know, one of the reasons why it was important to me was clarity is always king to

me personally as an audience member and as a writer. And I felt like in this show, especially, all of every episode had to be about one thing. And I don't just mean like, oh, yeah, you have your A, B, and C story. And they're all kind of about, no, it's like they all have to be really dealing with the same thing, even if they're geographically disparate, which we only do rarely. on this show, you know, as opposed to the sort of traditional structure of an epic where you have like four stories and four different countries being shot at the same time and you're just kind of, you can, you know, mix them up as you go. So we, you know, we were able to sort of use that.

But then the other thing that happens in every show, and it sort of, this show changed the way I think of the process of story and the process of making the show. And, you know, and you you've been in a lot of rooms and you probably are witness to this too when it takes over and it feels really good. Also, maybe sometimes on the bad days too, but like this feeling that I don't, you know, I am not an a tourist. I think it's just totally bullshit on the, on the feature side, frankly, but also on the, you know, in the television side when it comes to, oh, well, the writer is king or queen. It's like, no, I don't think that. What I learned especially in Shogun is, I think that the process is the author of the show and the good things.

about TV is that we as writers get to be authors of the process and how we go about it. And it felt very tornagan in that you study the wind. And you sort of feel like here's where the room is going. Here's where the attention of our writers is being devoted. And here's what the shape is. And you have an intention that you had at the beginning, a course that you wanted to set out. And then you just kind of tug and allow yourself or the writers to be kind of guided towards maybe a surprising ending and moments that come up as jokes in the room and gags and, you know, the sort of we love Tadanoabu Asano and we always thought to be, you know, kind of great for Yavishige and we had this picture of him in a tuxedo and we were like, that guy is here to party. And then that

kind of guided the shape of that character. And what started as a joke became just he, Yawishige should stride into the show like David Bowie, you know, like everything kind of took over in a surprising way. And then the production as well, once you start to integrate the cultural component, and you find the mechanism through which your crew filters 900 pages of an instruction manual to produce the show, things surprise you on the way. And, you know, even down to we were just, you know, revisiting the 10th episode. And the line that Miraji says about hope and faith when he's kind of helping Blackburn to translate, that came about, I think, on the day or a couple days before, because it was in the translation of it.

They were like, you know, hope and faith, it's actually kind of the same word in this period. And we're like, let's go with it. That's interesting and exciting. And, you know, you just have to kind of trust that if you've internalized the intentions well enough. And after five years, I would hope we've internalized the intentions of the show, then you just trust your instincts in the moment to say, sure, that's great.

You know, let's go with it. But it's like, as opposed to like, oh, we have to control every word and everything and every plot point and intention, you know, it's, it's, I think it's a lot broader than that. And I think Tornaug, at least speaking for myself, taught me a lot there. I mean, even the Blackthorn seconding Mariko, in the writers room, one of us was like, oh, it would be like Blackthorn seconding her. And then, oh, we should do that. The pause.

And so, yeah, it's, it's all the process and it's everybody's input that kind of accumulates. Yeah. In the book, it was Yawishige who stood up to second her. you know, which is kind of hilarious. That's funny. You know, there's a version of this series that is five seasons long. Same story, but like you could have told this story over the course of four or five seasons. And at various points, and I'm thinking of just, you know, it's things like Lost or Game of Thrones,

where you're like, this is a story about Rob. No, it's a story about John. No, actually, it's a story about, you know, and same thing for loss, where you might start and think it's about one person, and there's various protagonists that sort of emerge over the course of the series. And I think what I was really struck by was that at various points, I'm like, this is a start out. And if you're just watching it, you're like,

this is a show about this guy who's arrived in a strange land to him, and he's going to make his way through it. And then you're like, oh, no, it's about this guy, Toranauga, who runs this place, and it wants to bring peace to the world, however that has to happen. And then it becomes a show about Mariko. I mean, it's just her story. And you're just like, this is phenomenal because, like, I thought she was kind of like, you know,

if you're, if you don't anything about it, she is essentially like the perfect mechanism through which those two people can communicate and the story can move forward. And then finally, you know, and it's just like, oh, this is this guy's vision. And I, I almost, it's a show about all these people and it is an ensemble. But is there a, was there a central character? story that you were like, it has to tell this character's story and other people are in service? Or was there not that kind of hierarchy? Was it like a pure ensemble? I don't know.

It's good. It's like we were going off the scent of blood in every single episode. You know, it was, it felt, ultimately it felt like Merrico's story because she was the unicorn mechanism through which the story was possible. the act of translation and by, look, it wasn't us. I mean, Clavel did this. I'd love to credit us or the writers for, you know, her strength as a character,

but we did no invention with her whatsoever, you know. But the, like, we knew we had to have a lot of translation in this show, and I felt like it was really important to do something different with translation, to make it feel kind of like, I don't know, choose your analogy, like sex or like an act. scene or whatever it might be where it's just like the act of translation in itself is is something that could be exciting you know because otherwise why do we like if she's going to just say what he said then why do we need what she said in the middle of it like it has to change and evolve and

you have to be able to look at her face and wonder oh shit how is she going to translate that and feel attention in that and you know and so because of that I think a lot of it was merrico taking over yeah but you kind of described the the process of just reading the book. I mean, you start out many, many chapters devoted to the sea and the ship, you know, and it's fascinating, but you think this is Blackthorn story. Then you fall heavily into Toranauga's story, only to come out the other end, realizing, oh, wait, this was Mariko's story, you know, and it, to me, I didn't go into it thinking it was Mariko's story, not for a long time. It was only honestly, when her, when she died, that I had to clap the book,

closed and, you know, set it aside for a few days and take a break because I was so gutted. And I realized then that, you know, holy shit, this whole story hinged on a girlhood friendship, you know? I mean, wow. Yeah. Back to a kind of a practical question about production. You guys were obviously making a show that was in multiple languages, although I won't count Portuguese, which apparently I'm fluent, just from listening and watching.

for the show. It's amazing. It sounds just like English. What was the process like on set for the American crew and creative team with the Japanese actors to make sure that, you know, both on like a poetry and prose level, the performance was being

given the emphasis on the words that you wanted from the English language script? And then also, because I feel like the actor translation is so much more complicated than the words, right? Because just understanding that if you a Japanese actor who has seen samurai movies or thought about this era or even performed in them, you bring some feeling about how that ought to be done, you know, that might clash or not clash,

but might surprise a Western writer or director or producer saying, I want you to give us this emotion in this scene. I think that this could be answered with the discussion of the game of telephone. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, and we can, it's, we've certainly talked about the process in the writing of translation a lot, but the, you know, the summary version that, you know, it's just we, and we learned it as we went because we were, you know, like, I think over, like really bad at this and kind of allowed.

Really long time. Yeah. And part of what I like is, and I mean it in a writer's room, too, is like, you know, it was John Fabro who taught me this on the feature side that, like, there was a term he used called hug the cactus. Like sometimes you just got to hug the cactus, and it's like you hug this awful thing. and if you hug it tight enough, then it hurts really badly, and then nothing hurts after that. And you're kind of okay and sort of not afraid, right? And so I believe in that.

You just describe being a fan of Philadelphia sports teams, by the way. Yeah, that didn't phase me at all. That's how I love. That's my love language. I know both of your Philadelphia sportsdom, and I just want you to know that I refrain from wearing my Red Sox hat. You're on the wrong podcast for this one. Just throwing a blank hat, which now I'm realizing is that, like, talk about eightfold fence. That's like, that's the eightfold green monster right there. That's right. In sealing it entirely.

But so, yeah, the, you know, the, you know, the trance. So we just thought, look, I don't know, we're going to write this and we're going to send it to translator. Who translated for other movies or shows we like? Let's do that. And it was working with our, some. early on Japanese producers who sort of, you know, we sent it to this great company, and there were three or four great translators in Tokyo who would do it and turn it around. And when I showed this to Hiro-San, to Eriko Miyawa, another one of our valued collaborators

and producers on this, you know, they were very like, this is a good start. Like this translates, well, let's use it for sides, whatever, but like this doesn't feel like Jediagiki prose, period prose. It doesn't feel like the way people speak. It feels like just good translation. you know, in some sense. And I think that began for me, like this light bulb journey of realizing, like, in this post-truth world that we live in, right, that we also kind of have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as one-to-one translation. You know, it's kind of like this,

this game of like you, what is it, it's the, it's not Schrodinger, it's the uncertainty, it's the uncertainty principle. Like, once you touch it or move it, it changes, you know, and it has to by definition. And like, let's harness that in a certain way. And so we then found this Japanese playwright, Kyoko Moriaki, who was able to, she didn't speak a word of English, but she would like had work on period pieces a lot. And she would translate all of this into, you know, kind of the appropriate prose. And then Eriko and Hero would be sitting there weeks before we shot these scenes because we had to have this locked six weeks out to encounter this process, to which you know is a line producer's dream, meaning like dialogue doesn't show. change. And then we thought, no, no, no, Japanese dialogue doesn't change. But the English can still change. But the, you know, they would sort of modify it knowing our intention. And we would talk about it.

Erika would sort of, you know, pull me aside at various points and say, like, so this doesn't really work well in translation. Can we say it like this instead? And then the actors would add their flare. And, you know, and I think that this is not even to mention post. And when it was like telephone back to us, you know, we decided like to have our Japanese assistant editors write the subtitles, not the scripts, so that it would feel more like, you know, what that was actually being said. And did they ever prank you on that, by the way? Sorry to interrupt you, but did they ever like, did you ever get something back and just, no? Sometimes it would feel that way. Okay. Because it would feel like, wait a second, like I'm trying to remember the last line.

Oh, Chippos line. Yeah, exactly, a Vepis 5 where like, you know, we really, and then, you know, because you play this game of like, no, I want to see it exactly as it said. But actually what Ochiba said in episode five, the counsel will answer to me, you know, was like it just, it still just wasn't forceful enough. Like she actually- It was something like, I shall call a meeting. Yeah, it really was. This could have been an email, she says.

Do you have the Zoom link? Yeah. And it was, you know, her eyes said a lot more. It was like, oh, that's probably not going to be a good meeting, you know? Like it was so you sort of got it, but it was like we needed, I sort of politely said, You know, in that space, like, I'm in this case, like, this one's going to have to be as scripted. Like, we need it as an, they'll answer to me, you know, it just means more in English. But, you know, but I think playing that game was really, because you asked about on set,

and all this is not on set. You know, on set was we, not just because of all the consultants, advisors, producers, we had in Canada working on this, but also because of, I think, a principle of, like, You ever heard of the analogy of the Dear Fuckface letter? Like that you, if you start a letter, we can swear, right? Yeah. We hear it. Yeah.

But, you know, like if you start a letter with Dear Fuckface, it doesn't matter how nice that letter is. Like, the only thing that's going to be in someone's head is Dear Fuckface. And so, you know, it was really important to me, I guess on the opposite side of it of, like, we had safety meetings in two languages regardless of whether there were Japanese speakers or native Japanese speakers on set that day because it was important to remind. mind everyone that we exist here in a bilingual environment and that we didn't want to feel, even though English is, of course, dominant. We're in Canada, but we didn't want anyone who didn't speak that language to feel isolated

because of it. And, you know, that's a magical thinking thing. Of course, there was going to be, you know, the realities of that and, you know, groups gathering together because of language. But it meant a lot because, at least to the English-speaking crew, I can't speak for it from the Japanese side, because. engendered a spirit of respect to say, like, we're not just sort of jumping through lines that are in Japanese. We're going to sort of really pay attention to them. The focus pullers are

going to learn which word means that so that we can, and discussing it with, you know, because those things matter. And we ended up having an English speaking script supervisor and a bilingual, you know, primary script supervisor, uh, Kaziko, who, you know, really spoke Japanese and was able to sort of be like, she didn't inflect that right. I don't think that's, you know, the, you know, because otherwise you get just things where it doesn't matter to us as much, I guess. And I feel guilty of that. My last show was the show counterpart, which had a lot of German. And we didn't really, you know, pay attention to it on that level.

And I feel really badly about that. I talked to German speakers. And they're like, yeah, some of the lines I couldn't quite follow them. The Germans will be all right. You've also created an entire nation of people reacting like the Leo DiCaprio meme. When I'm like, I heard him say Toranaaga. Got it. But that's what we felt like at the monitors too.

because it's like, you know, Japanese sentence structure and version is such a thing, right? Like where it's like, I hear that word there and I don't see it subtitled in that way. And so we had to actually really work hard to switch the subtitles so we could reduce that as much as possible. There's nothing. That tries to be insane watching Japanese movies, right, where you hear the person's name and then three sentences later in the subtitle, you see that name. Yeah. You're held at arm's length that we really didn't want the subtitles to do that. We wanted them to bring you closer.

Rachel, I consider myself I was like in a trance watching the show I was so locked in but in episode nine when the Shinobi show up the 13 year old boy of me ran through the wall like the Kool-Aid man like was so excited and I was even more excited to find out

that the book apparently has like a lot of like Shinobi background stuff like like just a little bit like and you know obviously that's what is so great about reading novels like that is you're just like you get so much information so much Backstory to your video games? That's why we read books.

That was a very good book. What was the most painful thing you had to let go of from the book that couldn't make it into the show that you were like, oh, I would love to see this on screen. Oh, you're smiling. No, because I know what your answer is.

Oh, you do? I don't think you do. Well, there is a line that I'm still, you know, recovering. There's a lot. Do I do the line or do it? Well, okay, so regarding the show, Shinobi. My co-writer, Kalin Puente, she, she had these great descriptions of the

Shinobi, like, hands going up the wall, like just, you know, shimmying bodies up and over the wall. And she just, she went nuts with the shinobi. And I mean, it was delicious. And somebody, who I'm going to do, on my left here, said for budgetary, since we couldn't quite, you. You know, you know, zero in on the Shinobi as long as you want to release the Shinobi cut. Yeah. As far as, for me, it was a line that to me, every time that plays, I think, oh, it's in episode nine where Blackthrone comes to her and says, you know, if you don't want to live for you or your God, you know, live for me.

And he says it in a sweet way and you're thinking, you're thinking, okay. I get it, but the look on her face is kind of like, you don't get it. And the line that we had to cut was, so you don't want me to die for Tornaga's purposes so that I can then live for your purposes. You know, like it was something like that. And I was just like, oh, why did we cut that? Because it, but you know what, it would have been like a knife to the, she's given a lot of knives to the heart to a lot of knives to the heart to a lot of men. But that wasn't, that was your creations. That was that line, that wasn't from the book.

I was thinking you were going to mention a favorite Akawa GQ. Oh, Ecology. Oh, my God. That's a whole, that's a spinoff show. Well, we have questions about that as well. And you guys have been very generous with your time. So I just want to, before we let you go, I feel remiss that we haven't really said the names Anna Suoy and Cosmo Jarvis on this, this interview.

for the purposes of economy and efficiency and respecting your day, I wondered if there was a moment, because the casting, the show is so dependent on casting as much as it's dependent on anything else. I was wondering if you had a moment with either of those performers, whether it was before you started to film or whether it was on set that made you realize this is going to work on a deep level.

I assume with Cosmo Jarvis, it's the voice, which we will get to, but I wondered specifically if you had a different answer for Anna. For me, it was probably the filming of episode five, right? Dinner date from hell. And Anna was, that night was kind of struggling with telling her backstory, right? With her father and whatnot. And she just couldn't get there emotionally.

And she called, I'm sitting there in Video Village thinking, you know, I'm watching her. I'm thinking everything's fine, but I didn't realize she was struggling so much. And she, somebody called over the loudspeaker or the walkie talkies, whatever, that I was wanted on set. And I thought, oh, my God, what could, you know, what can I do? What could the writer do to help? Yeah, I don't what I'm doing. And so I went there and she asked me, just point blank, she said, tell me about your grandmother. And the reason why was because Anna is such a thorough, like, she's such an excellent performer and asked,

and artists that everything she does is so, so complete. And she had read one of my short stories. And she had internalized that. And she had me talk about my grandmother as the inspiration. And we got, and then I'm starting to cry. And I'm like, should I, should I play you for a minute? My God. You say like, wow.

No, Rico's aunt, older aunt showed up. But anyway, yeah, for me, for me, I was really struck by her, just her level of excellence. You know, it was just so pure and complete. By the way, we used the first take on that scene. So all of her panic of that was, you know, it's like it wasn't on screen. It's her first tape was fantastic. Cosmo, you know, Andy, I mean, you're like the voice is, is unforgettable.

You know, I don't, I don't think we, it wasn't, I think it was, I think it was. you know, a lot of, there was a lot of like, we were including Cosmo, like a lot of anxiety about like, are we, are we, are we, we, we're taking a swing here. Like, what are we doing? You know, like even, you know, in the casting, I don't think, I think he stole the role from our imagination. Because it was not, it was not, I think, the way we thought Blackthorn was going to look and go and act, you know, but he had this great audition in his, like, attic, like, where he was just on an iPhone held low and he was just, he was the part that we realized was there, you know, without realizing it was there. And I think had we not made that choice with Cosmo,

and there was a lot of handwriting in making that choice, I don't think we'd have the, the show we have because I think he took what is, let's be honest, a thankless performance role, you know, and by virtue of really off-center choice, made it into something that, you know, people, like we actually really look forward to seeing him on screen in every scene. And, you know, it's a challenge because I think as audiences, maybe our knives are kind of out for that guy. And he did it through comedy.

Sometimes I don't know if he would always agree it was comedy. Like, or it was so dry. Can you confirm that when he was in his attic with his iPhone, was he just like improvving? Was it like just naming? insulation, old toys. My uncle's pornography collection. I was shocked that you rolled this out.

I felt like this is a warm room. You know, I waited 50 minutes. It took this long for it to show up. Yeah, he, no, he was doing, honestly, like, we gave the, you know, when you do an audition scene, I always want to give, like, the worst possible scene to see if anyone can make me stay a week through it. And he was the only one, we did the garden exposition scene. were sort of like talking about, you know, the, this is the way they've calmed out the world,

and they sort of lay it out like that, and he made it so interesting. It was like we had never seen it before. There's a lot of modulation to his voice, too, though. He worked on that endlessly. I have two. Thank you for noting. I mean, 10 weeks to do so. So Chris and I talked a little bit before you guys came on about the finale,

and one of the things that I had to go back and check, I kept my, self-ignorant of the book and of the miniseries, the original miniseries, until I watched the end. And my takeaway was what we had described to you at the beginning was just how beautiful the restraint was and how in keeping with the overall consistent tone of the show, there was a part of my brain that's been like TV-pilled that was saying, wait, they're being coy. Are they leaving this battle for a second season? Were they hedging their bets? And when I realized the book ended this way, it wiped that away. That said, we live in the real world. And this was, by all accounts, a ratings phenomenon, and people are obsessed and the memes are exploding.

Where are you guys about the possibility? And I know you can't confirm or deny, but your possibility, your interest in doing more within this world, considering it's been five years of your life already. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been a long time. I mean, you know, honestly, it would just depend on doing something, being able to do something better than what the book already laid out for us if there were any more stories to tell. And I don't, I mean it, like, I don't know in the sense that, like, I don't know if we have

that idea or, you know, like, to even go down that road. Because I don't want, I just don't want a legacy of like, oh, they're off the book now, you know, like, what are they going to do? I can't think of any show that has ever faltered when that happened. When they went off book, yeah. Although I don't fully agree. I don't know. I think they were never really off the charted path there. You know, I think that's always the charted path, and they were doing what they were doing.

And I think they, I really happened to like a lot of details there. You know, we can always quibble over a long period of time that any show is never going to be perfect. But the, but I think they made a lot of great swings there. But the, I don't know. I just, I think it, yeah, we would have to be better. I think that this season benefited from how bad we were at it, too, the tension of having to learn how to drive the car as we were being in. It really contributed to the creation of it and the evolution of it. And now we're just really good at telling us. Yeah, I was going to say, that's an incredible take is we're too good to make showgun season two.

The only good lessons are in failure, you know? And yeah, how do we? I don't know. But it's also like, yeah, honestly, like, the I don't know is also like, well, there's, there's no more map. I mean, there's the fan fiction. I'm not even kidding. I have it on the wall across from us here that my assistant Sophie made at wrap this, this this Bush Cassie on Sundance kid poster with, with Yahu Shige and Blackthorn's faces on it.

And, you know, it's like that that would be a great. You know, fan fiction story that I'd love to see continue. That's obviously not possible. Just Blackthorn and a disembodied head. Just carrying around. What's in the bag? Blackthorne, it's like seven, but... Making the mouse moves.

Yes. Yeah, weekend at Bernie slash. Chris and I would love to suggest that you pay attention to a 1989 Sega Genesis game called Revenge of Shinobi. That has yet to be... I know Fallout is doing really well. I mean, you can still do the shimmying. It's right there. You guys could write your own check now.

Yeah. You know that game very, very well. I mean, if you get a chance to make more, I'm sure people would be ecstatic. But if this is it, you guys made kind of a perfect season of television. So, I mean, congratulations. It was such a wonderful experience. And it was so awesome to watch it. Like, we don't get the sensation enough anymore of like the uptake of it.

Of like, man, this is really good. You should see it. And now everybody's obsessed with it by a month into it. And now we're doing this because we want to drop this episode after. the finale and that's that's that's the best man well thank you it's it's a bummer to me that i don't know i've i came just like dropped back to whatever it's called x or twitter the thing you know just just now since the show's been coming out because it's been awesome yeah it's been x has been great for the last couple years yeah yeah it's been great like yeah i just i came back

in the right moment um but no i i just i don't know where like it's it's funny like we just live out here on maui and with the chickens and the chickens aren't talking about it so it feels it feels kind of nice and quiet, I guess. The mail clerk at our post office was talking about it. Yeah. In a good way. Yeah. In a good way.

He wants a poster. For what it's worth, whether it's, you know, to follow up on this interview or for potential future season, we made it clear to Lana and the team at FX that we would be willing to come to you next time for this podcast. That's right. Like, we don't always say that. Generous. I'm sure that mail clerk felt very seen by Shogun.

A lot of mail happens in Shogun. A lot of it hinges on them. What a great take. Yes. Actually, my father, who was a mailman for 32 years, he was the consultant on the pigeons because he raises pigeons. Wow. Yeah. This is the credit you're getting, Poppy.

He can't drop these nuggets at the end of our hour-long talk. So now we will have to follow up in Hawaii for sure. It was a pleasure meeting you both. Thank you for joining us. And really congratulations. I hope you do get some time off to enjoy it because it was really terrific. Take care. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate you. Thank you.