Chances are, if you’re watching anything starring Anna Sawai, you’re sitting on the edge of your seat. The New Zealand-born Japanese actress is at an inflection point in her career following the back-to-back successes of FX’s Shōgun and Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Wearing a cozy sweater and a warm smile, the 31-year-old star tells me she’s been working toward the dreams she’s living now since she was a child. “My mom taught me that if you want to do something special, you really have to put your time into it,” she says. “If it’s just luck, it’s going be a onetime thing, so you have to keep patiently working on it.”
Sawai, who made her acting debut in a Tokyo production of Annie at 11, trained in dancing and singing and was a founding member of the J-pop girl group Faky before rediscovering that acting was her true passion. She’s since appeared in the Netflix crime drama Giri/Haji, the Fast & Furious franchise, and Apple TV+’s adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko.
Her role as Lady Mariko in Shōgun showcases her ability to tackle complex characters with depth and nuance. The critically acclaimed historical drama, set in feudal Japan in the year 1600, features a stunning performance from Sawai as an interpreter between Lord Yoshi Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his English captive John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis).
Prior to joining the star-studded cast (“Seeing Hiroyuki Sanada on set was like a master class for me,” she says), Sawai met with co-creator Justin Marks to ensure the story, based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel, was being told accurately. “As a Japanese woman, it was really important to me that we weren’t just perpetuating this image that Westerners have of us,” she explains.
She walked away feeling reassured, and with a part she could sink her teeth into. “I felt like she was a character that I had never really seen before,” Sawai says. “To be able to play someone who is so layered and who’s so broken and sensitive, but also having that unbelievably strong core and finding her voice and really taking action—that meant a lot to me.”
Every detail mattered in becoming Lady Mariko. As Sawai puts it, she had to “relearn how to be a human being,” whether it was drinking tea in a precise way (“I would have to shift my body three times, take the cup, put the cup in front of me, and then push myself back,” she says) or learning to move while wearing a heavy kimono (“I couldn’t slouch; I couldn’t cross my legs”). “When I wore the kimono, it really felt like I was carrying myself differently,” she says. “And when I took it off, without the many layers, I was now back to being my plain old self.”
Once shooting wrapped, with no break in between, Sawai embraced the role of Cate Randa in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, an adventure series that follows survivors of Godzilla. The change in subject matter came after Sawai informed her team she wanted to do something fun and modern. “I was just relieved that I didn’t have to wear the kimono for another six months,” she says with a laugh. “I think I would have struggled a little bit more to forget or to leave Mariko behind had I not gone to Monarch. I needed it.”
Sawai has a clear vision of what’s ahead for her career and is wary of being typecast. “I love doing action, but I don’t want to be labeled as the ‘action actress,’” Sawai says. “I’m confident doing it, but I’m very selective, because I know that it’s easy for people to have this image of an Asian person doing action, and we are so much more than that.” She says that when she’s evaluating new roles, she considers whether the action makes sense and if the character has a richly detailed story in addition to the fighting.
Being inspired by other people’s stories continues to give her momentum. “I hope that I kind of stay this way, where I’m not completely confident in myself, because that allows me to keep searching and keep bettering myself,” Sawai says. “I don’t think I see myself as being young and successful or anything like that. I’m taking baby steps forward.”
Hair by Anton Alexander for Kérastase; makeup by Grace Ahn at Day One; manicure by Merrick Fisher and Naoko Saita at Opus Beauty; produced by Production Partners; photographed on location at The Hollywood Roosevelt.
A version of this article appears in the June/July 2024 issue of ELLE.
