Welcome to My Favorite Scene ! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind a few of our favorite television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together. “Shōgun” star Anna Sawai will readily admit that watching herself on screen is not her favorite pastime. “Actors have this all the time, but they see little things that they wish they could change,” said the current Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Emmy nominee to IndieWire over Zoom, while discussing how she determined which of her scenes in the hit FX series is her favorite.
Anyone who has seen the latest adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel, created by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, and leading Emmy nominations this year with 25 nods, could probably guess Sawai would choose something from the penultimate episode “Crimson Sky,” in which she gives a tour-de-force performance as Lady Mariko. But the specific sequence she chooses, in which her character makes a show of trying to leave the royal castle on the order of her Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) in order to prove that Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira) and Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaidô), is more unconventional than her more often quoted moments within the fan favorite episode. “The way that they edited this scene, whenever I see it still, it gets me really emotional.
And I think it’s because I still feel that emotional stuff that Mariko was going through,” said the actress. “E.