Shogun’s Showrunner Justin Marks Opens Up About Maintaining Authenticity To Japanese Culture While Crafting The Intense Show

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00:00everything was so well done. And I just want to know, what was like your process as showrunner

00:04trying to keep everything in order to make sure it was as accurate as it could be?

00:08I think I'll key on to the word, you know, accurate, because it's an interesting one

00:14to talk about in the context of the show. And it's one that with our department heads,

00:19we talked about a lot, what does it mean to be accurate about a period in 1600,

00:24that, you know, there's still, to this day, a lot of debate about within Japan,

00:29within the community of Japanese historians, and many of whom worked on our show, to help advise

00:35us, you know, what are we in search of, and also in the interest of rendering something that's

00:40makeable on screen and, you know, that we can execute at the number that we have. And so,

00:47what the word that we ended up really chasing more than anything was this idea of authentic.

00:53What is it to do something that is authentic to work with your Japanese producers,

00:57your Japanese advisors and collaborators, to create a version of Japan in 1600, that hopefully

01:08will feel true to Japanese audiences. And to do that, I think you have to really rely on

01:13those voices in your process. Our Helen Jarvis, our production designer, you know,

01:19worked very hard through historical detail to kind of, you know, get it right, so to speak.

01:28And then you're adding layers that, you know, are also expedient for production purposes. And so,

01:34when we did that, we would very often rely on the same kind of tricks and shortcuts that were done

01:39within the vernacular of Japanese cinema, in order to do it, so that we were careful to,

01:44you know, be sure that we were being as respectful as humanly possible.