FX's critically-acclaimed historical drama Shogun finished up its 10-episode run last week, and Anna Sawai was universally praised for her performance as the tragic Toda Mariko.
Amid the Emmy-nomination talk, the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters star is certain to be inundated with movie offers, and we wouldn't be surprised if she was given a shot at a major superhero role at some point.
Sawai spoke about her career and potential move to Hollywood to THR, revealing that her big break could have come much earlier, but her commitment to her J-Pop band, FAKY, meant she was forced to miss her chance to audition for the role of Katana in 2016's Suicide Squad.
“After the training — multiple years of training — you are either lucky and join a group, or debut as a solo singer, or you’re gone,” Sawai explained. “I was like, ‘This is my chance!’ And then I go to my manager and he’s like, ‘You can’t audition.’ They basically told me that if I’m gone for over a month, the girls [the other members of FAKY] are not going to have anything to do. It felt like they were really tying me down, and because of my contract, I couldn’t leave until the time that I actually left [in 2018].”
Of course, there's nothing to say that Sawai would have landed the part, and even if she did, it may not have done very much for her status. Katana was ultimately played by The Boys star Karen Fukuhara, and while she did a fine job, the character wasn't exactly positioned to be a standout.
“She did an amazing job, and I respect her so much, and I love her,” Sawai said of Fukuhara. “But also, I would have loved to audition for it.”
As for Shogun, Sawai says she watched the final episode alone in her hotel room in Los Angeles, and it was “very emotional” for her. “It was like just saying bye to your kid and sending them off to college, almost.”
"Figuring they're all expendable, a U.S. intelligence officer decides to assemble a team of dangerous, incarcerated supervillains for a top-secret mission. Now armed with government weapons, Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and other despicable inmates must learn to work together. Dubbed Task Force X, the criminals unite to battle a mysterious and powerful entity, while the diabolical Joker (Jared Leto) launches an evil agenda of his own."