‘ShÅgun’ Creators Reveal How Emmy-Nominated FX Series Shot a ‘Variety of Endings’
Marcus Jones
The old adage that good things come to those who wait certainly applies to screenwriters Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, the married duo responsible for the latest TV adaptation of James Clavell’s epic 1975 novel “Shōgun.”
Speaking to IndieWire over Zoom, the pair’s jaws still drop upon the reminder that FX first announced they were to make the series as part of the same August 2018 press release that announced the Alex Garland series “Devs,” which had a comparatively breezier time making it onto TV in 2020. “That’s how long it’s been,” said an awestruck Kondo.
Fast forward to now, nearly six years since their journey, and “Shōgun” not only bested “The Bear” Season 2 as the best streaming debut of any FX show on Hulu with nine million viewers, but received 25 Primetime Emmy nominations, the most of any series this year.
In addition to both being nominated for Outstanding Drama Series as the creators of the show, Marks and Kondo share an Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series nomination for penning “Anjin,” the show’s premiere episode. Plus, Kondo has a second nod in the same category for the penultimate Season 1 episode “Crimson Sky” alongside writer Caillin Puente.
Below, the writers share the reaction to the good Emmy news, as well as insight into how they are approaching the unprecedented continuation of Clavell’s novel with Season 2.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: Congratulations on all the Emmy nominations. I imagine you all are in touch with the cast and crew right now. Did anyone have a memorable reaction to the news?
Justin Marks: Honestly, it’s all been [through] text because we’re all over the world right now, and everyone’s at various hours of their day.
Rachel Kondo: Well, you can describe Caillin [Puente]’s and my reaction for Episode 109. We were on FaceTime. We held our mouths in silence for about two minutes before we started giggling because we didn’t know what to say.
Marks: I mean, to see your wife and someone who years ago was once your assistant sharing credit on an episode of television that is my favorite episode of TV of all time, that they were nominated for writing, was really just— a lot of tears were shed this morning, and I’m so proud of all of this cast and crew who were finally recognized in the way that they deserve, for so much hard work to bring this show to life. I should say it’s in our first season, but it took a long time to bring the show to life, and so many of them, there was nothing obvious about this show in looking at it. They took great risks signing onto it, they really did.
Kondo: Yeah, the one thing that was obvious was that it was going to take exceptional vision to be able to navigate through all the complexities and the challenges, and starting with John Landgraf and Gina Balian, Kate Lambert, Lindsay Donahue, collaborating with Michaela Clavell and Justin. They really pulled something off that I’m not even sure Justin was confident would work. He didn’t know. None of us knew if anybody would tune in.
Marks: There weren’t a lot of templates that we could look to for this. And fortunately, when you’re in that situation, what you have is you’re only as good as the sum of all your parts, and all these parts are now being recognized. So wow, really, really great.
Did the vision for your version of “Shōgun” evolve at all, given how it was announced in 2018, and only recently have we seen shows not in English gain popularity and become more of not only something that the Emmys recognize, but global audiences really respond to. So was the aspect of having the characters speak in Japanese always a part of it? Did that change?
Marks: Oh yeah, no, that never changed. It was our dream to work with actors of this caliber on a show like this, and so many of these actors, they only speak Japanese, and even the ones who are bilingual, to see them performing in their own language was always the goal for this. And now to see them recognized for having performed in their own language, to see some of the names that are household names in our house now becoming household names in other houses was always, always, always, from the time of the writer’s room for this show, it was day one, our stated goal was to someday get to look across a cast of actors that we would want for this show, and to say that the whole world will know their face, was really what we wanted.
Kondo: But I do have to say, I feel like we got fairly lucky with the timing. I mean, any earlier, I don’t know if people would be ready. It feels abundantly intentional, but a lot of the process was just feeling our way through the dark. And again, kudos to FX for figuring out how to do this and to put it out there.
So it’d be true to say it’s more like the TV environment changed in a way that was more conducive to people embracing this show?
Marks: Yeah, and I was just musing. It’s like no one has shown me the statistic of how many times a book has been adapted twice, and for both iterations to be recognized in some way by an awards body. I’d love to see the numbers on that because I think it really speaks to the genius of James Clavell.
Kondo: And the genius of the questions he was asking way back when. It’s clearly resonating with people today, too, and so I think he was circling around things that always matter. How do we make connections with each other? How do we learn from each other?
Marks: Yeah. It was told once in a broadcast context and found great success, and now we can tell it again in the international context of linear and streaming. And the fact that the show could appear all around the world on Disney+ really probably would’ve warmed his heart, James Clavell, from the place of this is what the vision of “Shōgun” the book was, was to be a story that is not about one culture or another culture. It’s about all of our cultures and how our cultures interact with each other and understand each other and fail to understand each other, and so to be that today is really just heartening. Heartening that people not just watched it but recognized it in this way.
Something that got a lot of attention during Emmys campaigning was “Shōgun” moving from the limited series categories to the drama categories. You mentioned in a statement alongside the Season 2 renewal announcement that you all had more ideas to explore, and that continuing the series was always in the back of your mind. To what extent did you all know that Season 2 was a possibility while you were making it? Were there any more scenes filmed that maybe got held back because of that?
Marks: Look, it started with fan fiction in the writer’s room, and then on set, as we started to see what was working, we really started to feel like, “Ugh, I want to see this further down the line, and this thing and that thing and how this will pay off sometime.” And so we started to do that. We actually, this is something we haven’t really talked about that much, but we shot a variety of endings for stories just to experiment with some ideas and see what was working, to give ourselves choices in post, and cut some stuff that we really love because we were like, “I don’t want to have certainty on that because I think I want to tell that story someday forward on screen if we’re given the chance.” Now, here we are and trying to do it, and we’re just starting with the writers, but we’re very excited for what we have so far, that’s for sure.
So it sounds like you all are at the stage where you’ve formed a Season 2 writer’s room. What are some questions that need answering? The kind of loose threads you feel comfortable highlighting that maybe shape your mindset for Season 2, like “Who does Toranaga even still have now?”
Marks: What I will say is that the questions that James Clavell raised in the book were beautifully unresolved in the book, as well as part one of this show. And our goal on this journey is when you look at the fiction and you look at the history, is to evolve that another step. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer some of these questions because what’s so beautiful about them, but to keep twisting them and exposing the hypocrisies of some of the resolutions in part one even, and to keep digging in deeper and deeper and questioning even places we landed. That’s the journey the audience had in the first season of this show, and so you take that and you make it the show. And so people are going to be pretty surprised when they see what we’re coming up with, and also satisfied that It’s the same old “Shōgun,” I hope.
Kondo: Yeah, we hope.
Marks: That it feels like the same show because I really think it will. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.
Kondo: Minus a few key players. That’s sad.
Marks: Yeah. Plus a few, so–
Kondo: A few people have asked us how we’re going to bring Mariko back. Will it be ghost form? I’ve been asked twice in earnest because people miss her, they mourn her.
Marks: And we will not give an answer to that question. [Laughs]
