Somehow, Hiroyuki Sanada has been preparing for Shogun for decades. The veteran actor, familiar with projects including Sunshine and Bullet train, took on a leading role for the FX period drama, not only playing Lord Yoshii Toranaga, but becoming actively involved as a producer, focusing on ensuring the details of the 16th century-set series were accurate. “That's a very significant point for me,” he says. Consequence during a sit-down interview. “Why not jump in and make it authentic?”
Based on the classic novel by James Clavell, Shogun It's technically a fictional story about a Westerner (Cosmo Jarvis) who arrives on Japanese shores just as the country faces a major political crisis. However, his inspiration closely approximates real historical figures of the time, and since childhood, Sanada read about this era. Not only that, but as an actor in historical dramas, he says, he has played several real-life samurai about which Shogun Characters were based on it, including Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shōgun in history and the inspiration for Toranaga.
“It seemed very familiar to me,” he says of that time. “We had a fictional novel and our original script, so I followed my script more than the actual story. [But] That's why we needed to be as authentic as possible, so that the story and the characters were believable.”
Shogun is one of several high-profile projects Sanada has worked on in recent years, all drawing on his experience as a martial artist and with different tones. Due to schedules and other global concerns, his casting Shogun preceded the filming of many of those roles: Sanada filmed the recent remake of Mortal Kombat just before the pandemic, while his first project after the lockdown was Bullet train, which was filmed before the arrival of vaccines. “We were scared, on the little train, fighting with the boys,” she says.
He followed Bullet train up to date with its appearance in John Wick: Chapter 4at which time I also had a production schedule for Shogun. Then, “right after they killed me [in John Wick]”, he laughs, went to Vancouver for the long shoot, followed by post-production (“right after we finished all the ADR for the SAG actors, on strike”).
Immediately after the SAG strike ended, Sanada went to Australia to film. mortal kombat 2which ended before Christmas 2024, leaving him free to focus on promotion. Shogun. “Excellent timing,” she says.
thanks to our partners at consequence.net
