00:00I think curiosity is the thing that makes our best characters stand out on this show.
00:08It's that skill, that ability to observe and close your mouth and be silent and just listen to people
00:14that we hope, more than anything, this show engenders.
00:17You must train yourself to listen.
00:20For instance, you can listen to the sound of a blossom falling or the rocks growing.
00:27Both Toranaga and Lady Mariko are just such layered characters.
00:32And in a novel that's a thousand pages long, you really get that depth of them.
00:37But it's such a different experience as an actor, I think, bringing that to the screen.
00:42Including you, Anna. It was your first time on the horse with the sword.
00:47I feel like it was a lot to learn, but I loved every moment of it.
00:52For Mariko, we looked all over. We went through several countries.
00:57And Anna was somebody who had come to us early, and she just blew us all out of the water.
01:01There wasn't a second choice. She was the only one.
01:04Being able to create this very tranquil energy isn't something that you can just do like that.
01:10And it really helped me kind of go into zen mode.
01:14Smelling the tatami, walking on the gravel outside in the garden.
01:19Seeing the pond, hearing the water.
01:22What do I say?
01:24Tell her she's beautiful.
01:26All of those little elements really put me into the mind of Mariko.
01:33I actually think the women, they weren't pulling strings as much as they were watching those who pulled the strings so closely.
01:41That they could either anticipate it, get ahead of it.
01:44Or, you know, the women of the show, to my mind's eye, had to be that much more cunning, that much sharper, stronger.
01:54It really felt personal.
01:58We're constantly having to think about how people perceive us, but that doesn't matter.
02:03It's really in your heart, and it's what you know as the truth.
02:06Even at her worst, Mariko always knew her truth.
02:10Please wait until I have fallen.
02:13I was really nervous before I came here because I've never done period pieces.
02:18Hiro-san is a legend, so I knew that he would be able to see right through me, which really scared me.
02:25But, from day one he was just really eager to just help and share his knowledge.
02:40You may be able to change the face of the world with me.
02:49Of all the actors we've hired, Hiro has probably been on this project longer than anyone else.
02:53I think he's been on the project seven or eight years.
02:55And it's like the role he was meant to play.
02:58Hiro comes into it with just an openness and an eagerness and truly just a warmth that you will rarely find at the top of a call sheet.
03:08The first time that I met him was at a weapon training with hundreds of cast and BG.
03:15And he would just show up and come up to individuals and just share any tips that he had.
03:23He would spend hours talking to me on a weekend to discuss certain lines and polish the Japanese dialogue.
03:31And make it more comfortable for me to speak because it's such a complicated language.
03:37When we were out there in the woods on countless nights in the rain and the mud shooting the battle sequence from 103,
03:46he's out there in full armor with that sword making up moves as he went because he'd been doing this for so long.
04:17He's just very invested in creating a world that feels authentic and feels real.
04:22He'll watch respectfully and he'll come in and just make small tweaks and you can see immediately a shifting everything.
04:46He left Japan a long time ago.
04:48I came here and thought that he came here all by himself, shining the earth and making the soil.
04:58And I thought that this time he would be the one to plant the seeds.
05:05I think he's a bridge between Japan and the world.
05:16www.LRCgenerator.com
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