‘Shōgun’ Star Anna Sawai on Her J-Pop Past & Stepping Into Her Power

It’s wild how much things can change overnight.

When I first chatted with Anna Sawai, one Tuesday morning this past July, she was seated in the lobby of the New York Edition, Ian Schrager’s hotel in the landmark Metropolitan Life Tower. She was dressed plainly but elegantly, in neutral tones that heightened her natural beauty without overpowering her five-foot-one frame. It was the day before the nominees for the 2024 Emmy Awards were to be announced, and, whether out of sincere disbelief or as a protective mechanism against whatever the next day would bring, Sawai diligently deflected praise for her critically lauded portrayal of Toda Mariko in Shōgun, the FX remake of the 1980 NBC miniseries adapted from James Clavell’s best-selling novel set in feudal Japan.

“During shooting, I remember feeling unsure about myself, wondering whether I had given enough to the character, because she was so beautifully written,” Sawai said, between sips of coffee. “Even after we wrapped, I wasn’t sure if I had done enough. And when I finally watched Shōgun, I could see all the things that I wished I could fix—not that I know how to fix them.” Like the steely, sword-wielding noblewoman she plays in the show, the 31-year-old actor was modest, swiftly cutting off any suggestions that she might be called up to the stage on television’s biggest night. “When people started mentioning my name, I was like, ‘Shut up, that’s so silly,’ ” she said. “ ‘Am I really going to be part of that conversation?’ ”

Yet, 24 hours later, Shōgun was not merely part of the Emmys conversation, it dominated it—with 25 nominations, the most of any series this year, including lead actress for Sawai, lead actor for Hiroyuki Sanada, outstanding directing for Frederick E.O. Toye, and outstanding drama. By Friday, just days after our first meeting, Sawai had suddenly become a bona fide star, fielding a flood of industry offers and being shot by the photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin in Chanel Haute Couture for this issue—her first solo American magazine cover.

On set that day in a Chelsea photo studio, Sawai was stunned but emboldened. “As a person starting in this industry, I’m still trying to take it all in,” she said matter-of-factly. Cautiously, she revealed a grin. “With the show’s reception, I’m like, okay, I guess it’s not all as bad as I thought.” Bemusedly, she added, “Maybe I can feel a little bit more competent in what I’m doing.” As “Scream,” by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson, played in the background, a wind machine whipped her regal Chanel cape in the air like a superhero’s. “Beeeaaauutiful,” van Lamsweerde shouted, drawing out her vowels and punctuating each click of the camera with a “wow.” Sawai nailed the shot in mere minutes.

Two years ago, she was best known for her roles in F9: The Fast Saga, the ninth main installment in the Fast & Furious film franchise, in which she played a top-secret trained fighter, and in the Peabody Award–winning Pachinko, an adaptation of the acclaimed 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee, starring Sawai as a young woman climbing the corporate ladder in late-1980s Japan. Next up is the Apple TV+ Godzilla spin-off Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, in which she is the adult grandchild of a kaiju (or monster) hunter. The series was renewed for a second season just five months after its first episode premiered, in April.

Shōgun also became an instant smash after its February debut, with audiences and reviewers in awe of the epic soap opera’s ensemble cast and period authenticity. It wasn’t a given that an American drama with the majority of its dialogue in Japanese would break through in today’s attention-starved streaming era—and yet that’s exactly what happened. Most of what the world remembers about the original 1980 adaptation has to do with Richard Chamberlain, the charming white-dude hero swashbuckling and seducing the Land of the Rising Sun. This time around, however, Sawai’s performance as a woman on the verge of seppuku, or ritual suicide, is at the heart of the series. The Washington Post declared Sawai an “actor of uncommon subtlety” and “a performer with so many talents, capable of communicating and emoting in both Japanese and English.” Esquire raved that she “put together one of the year’s most awe-striking performances.” Sawai’s tour de force in the penultimate episode was “the sweeping period drama’s high point,” according to The New York Times. In June, Sawai was invited to take a seat alongside the likes of Nicole Kidman and Jodie Foster, industry veterans nearly twice her age, at The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actress Roundtable.

In Shōgun, her character’s narrative unfolds partly through the spectacle of her ornate clothes. Episode after episode, kosodes (a type of kimono), jubans (an under kimono), and robes depicting lifeless branches and snow-covered grasses eventually give way to vivid patterns and colors—symbols of her growing autonomy amid the political and cultural turmoil of 17th-century Japan. “The weight of everything we wore, even just on our shoulders, was pretty crazy. You couldn’t take the pieces off during the break, because then it would take 40 minutes to put everything back on again,” Sawai said. “Wearing the costumes five days a week, nine hours a day, for 10 months was physically tough, but it really allowed me to live in the character’s shoes. The clothes made me feel like, okay, today’s the day that I feel weak, or today’s the day that I feel like I have a voice.”

Sawai’s process of finding her own power in the world has also included plenty of plot twists: She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and moved to Yokohama, Japan, when she was in preschool. She became a child actor and, at 11, beat out 9,000 other children to land the lead in a Nippon TV production of Annie. At 14, she auditioned to join a J-pop boot camp run by the management company Avex, training throughout high school and her sophomore year of college before joining the J-pop girl group Faky as its lead vocalist in 2013. Sawai lightly rolled her eyes when discussing the band. “They were labeling us as the ‘real girls,’ like we were gonna be very, very authentic,” she said. “So they thought the name showed self-awareness—like, we’ll call this fake, because we’re so real.” Never mind, she added, that the name was made up by the company.

The girl-group prep involved endless rehearsals, during which the five young female members practiced hip-hop moves in front of wall mirrors as instructors clapped, shouted, and admonished them to bob and stomp harder. “For those 10 years, I was taught to listen more than say anything. That made me lose confidence in myself. I’m having to unlearn a lot of the things that I was taught, which is kind of unfortunate, and hard to do when you’re in your 30s,” Sawai said. “Maybe if I hadn’t had that experience, I would have had a shortcut to being comfortable with the way I am and unapologetically myself.” In conversation, she is transparent about how the kowtowing to authority that marked her strict stage upbringing still occasionally haunts the way she navigates her career. “When I was entering the industry, I would always go to my agents and be like, ‘What should I do?’ ”

On one hand, she continued, “I would never recommend to anyone, ‘You should go join the J-pop industry.’ I would not want my kids—if I have kids in the future—to do that.” On the other, she has learned to see the silver lining in her pop past. “It feels long ago enough, like it was a different person,” she said. “Now I feel it’s important that I tell the story of my J-pop days. I don’t know if it would be me producing it or just me as an actor, but I’m ready for it.”

Personal resilience certainly seems to have fueled her riveting star turn as Mariko in Shōgun. “You see that society has made her the way she is, and you can’t blame her for what she has been through,” she said of the character. After all, Mariko is a woman shadowed by her past: Her father violated Japanese feudal law and slew the tyrant he was sworn to serve. Sawai is steadily learning to offer herself the same grace that she gives to her on-screen self. “It’s still a slow process,” she said, then paused briefly, as if to gather her composure for the uncharted course ahead. “But maybe everything I’ve done so far means I can now listen to my own instincts.”

Hair by Akki Shirakawa for Oribe at Art Partner; makeup by Aaron De Mey for Sisley Paris at Art Partner; manicure by Yuko Tsuchihashi for KOSE’ Nail Holic at Susan Price NYC.

Produced by VLM Productions; Producers: John Nadhazi, Michael Gleeson; Lighting Director: Jodokus Driessen; Studio Manager: Marc Kroop; Photography assistant: Fyodor Shiryaev; Digital Technician: Brian Anderson; Retouching: Stereohorse; Fashion assistants: Tyler VanVranken, CeCe Finney, Briah Taubman, Maia Wilson; Hair assistant: Rei Kawauchi; Makeup assistant: Elika Hilata; Tailor: Elise Marie Fife at Altered Management.