JUSTIN MARKS: I’m trying to think of something funny to say about it and I can’t.
One of my fellow journaliststweeted something like, Where’s the emotional support group for Episode 8?
MARKS:Ineeded a support groupafter Episode 8, because Hiromatsu was a tough one for me.
Image via FX
Then it was like, We’re gonna have to kill this guy.
It really was tough.
But, obviously, Mariko, I hear people like her, too.
When a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village, Lord Yoshii Toranaga discovers secrets that could tip the scales of power and devastate his enemies.
Are you paying attention to those reactions at all?
Or are you trying not to really look at it and stay offline?
MARKS: No, we’re not trying to stay offline.
Image via FX
I’m so curious of, like,whatisthe watercooler anymore?Does it really exist?
I don’t know.
I can’t imagine it has.
Image via FX
But we’ve watched reaction videos of Nagakados death.
RACHEL KONDO:I didn’t know people filmed themselves watching something.
MARKS: It’s super fun.
Image via FX
For moments like that, it’s super fun when you know it’s coming.
I discovered it onwhatever episode with the cannon fire.
Honestly, it didn’t feel like our biggest flex in terms of narrative anything.
Image via FX
Its just that thats something that happened.
KONDO: We didnt know people would react at all.
I’m being honest.
Image via FX
MARKS: So it’s nice that people are at least watching it.
Are you aware of the memes at all?
MARKS: We had the memes, definitely.
So, it’s nice to see that those are out there because we needed some high-res gifs.
Its like, This hat is awesome.
It happened time and time again.
KONDO: You would see the hat, and you’d be like, Huh?
Then, with Hiro under the hat, it makes abundant sense.
I mean, every frame has his stamp on it.
That was the thing that we were trying to react to as we were making the show.
How can we make slight corrections to the way we tell these stories?
Neither culture really always wants to we make shows the way we make shows.
There was the wig process on this show.
There’s an Eastern wig style, there’s a Western wig style.
The problem is they don’t look that good in close-ups, necessarily.
KONDO: I would say ode to her character, 100%.
Butwhat makes the ode as affecting as it is is the friendship she had with Ochibaas girls.
Episode 9 is the other big thing.
How do you talk about it word by word?
How do you do it?
We knew we had the goods.
That, I think, was a really fun thing to construct.
MARKS: Although Toranaga knew all along.
I think he constructed this whole thing to sort of push her from the beginning, which is cool.
But yeah, Blackthorne and the audience are kind of coming along for the ride.
What was the intention in seeding those scenes throughout the finale?
MARKS: We had a lot of fun with that in the writers room.
Now it’s all a flashback of his tales of, “Let me tell you about Japan.”
To wrap our heads around that felt very precarious.
MARKS: It didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel true.
We simply said, Let’s not do it here.
We felt that if it was going to happen, it would have to be right.
When it came together, it was like, Of course.
Now it’s inevitable that he would have to sort of do that.
And hes bad at it.
KONDO: And conviction.
What you want to say with your life, and by taking it.
That was not in the book.
It was actually Kiyama that did show up in the book.
So she said she was going to do it herself, and everything happens.
That’s a kind of selflessness.
This is what people struggle with… particularly males, should I say?
But thats zeroing yourself out.
Eastern versus Western at the end of the day, it’s just people and their impulses.
Their relationship has such tenderness to it that evolves and grows through the series until that finale.
Did you often look for ways to expand that dynamic in ways that the book doesn’t?
MARKS: I guess the answer is yes and no.
KONDO: And then always awkward.
I can hear you!
MARKS: Theyre back on their bullshit again, and she’s got to deal with it.
But that’s sort of her place in life.
Because I don’t think she ever was, and Clavell never made her one.
KONDO: Oh yeah.
We get the parallel of that line, Why tell a dead man the future?
MARKS: And inevitable.
We built the top of the cliff in Episode 1.
And I was like, That’s okay.
Yabushige says in Episode 7, on the beach, I always feel like Im cursed to this.
Every time I cheat death it comes back.
KONDO: We should have worked it in that he says, I want to die on this cliff.
MARKS: We’ll go back to it.
And that’s Yabushige.
I guess here I am.
So let’s do this, which actually lent itself to his performance.
KONDO: Yabushige was so obsessed with a good death too, right?
One of the two.
MARKS: Obsessed with death, nonetheless.
Did you ever decide what he’s changing on it?
I think every day I start writing wills.
“It’s a good will.
Every time we got a chance to do another will joke, we would do it.
In fact, I have his will actually mounted on my wall here in Kanji.
Among the greatest privileges I’ve ever had in this business was collaboration with him.
He’s just so unpredictable and sideways in his approach.
KONDO: Always in the will, though, was Find my wife a good husband.
MARKS: Who could be married to this guy?
There’s no intention of doing a second season.
On the other hand, Clavell has written many more novels in this saga, set in different periods.
Would you be open to the possibility of doing an anthology format with different characters, adapting those stories?
MARKS: I gotta say, apropos of nothing, we are really diggingTai-Pan.
It’s a great book.
I picked it up to just see, Can he strike lightning twice?
So, sure,maybe we’ll doTai-Pansomeday.
It’s only a half-joke at this point, but who knows?
I haven’t gotten to the end.
KONDO: The history exists.
KONDO: Yabushige in London.
MARKS: Yeah, exactly.
Shogunis available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
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