Warning: spoilers for FX’s Shōgun “Chapter Nine - Crimson Sky” are in play. If you’re not caught up with the action up to or beyond this point, you’ve been warned.
The ninth episode of FX’s Shōgun adaptation was a particularly powerful one for fans of actor Anna Sawai and her character Toda Mariko. The penultimate episode to one of the biggest hits of the 2024 TV schedule, audiences saw James Clavell’s heroine make the ultimate sacrifice in a time of crisis. And thanks to stunt choreographer Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle, we also got to see Ms. Sawai performing a fight scene that was all her, much to the chagrin of internet trolls who thought otherwise.
How Anna Sawai Took Over For Her Stunt Performer In “Chapter Nine - Crimson Sky”
Lauro, or “Lash” as his friends and colleagues tend to call him, was one of the handful of creatives involved with Shōgun that I was able to speak with recently. With the continued success of the limited series’ recently concluded run, I had the opportunity to dig into what became not only Lash’s favorite Shōgun fight sequence, but also a personal favorite of Anna Sawai herself.
By his own account, about five days of rehearsal and three days of shooting went into the moment where Mariko attempts to escape the castle of Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira). And when recalling the scale and scope of this stunt performer’s dream, Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle told CinemaBlend this story about how Anna Sawai didn’t necessarily have to take part in this sequence:
I had an amazing stunt double for her who looked like her, moved like her, and set up the whole scene for her, and then helped train her. But Anna did the whole thing when it came down to filming, and she was amazing. She's a trained dancer, and has done martial arts in the past. So she was super keen to do it, and super able, and we loved working with her. So it was just a beautiful thing from start to finish. That was probably our biggest battle of the series too. We had 40 guys fighting, prior to Anna's situation.
Anyone who’s watched the ninth episode of Shōgun would more than likely remember this scene when prompted. With this attempted escape ultimately forcing Ishido’s hand in letting his “captives” go free, Mariko’s stance against her would-be opponents almost looked to be her last. Remember, in the finale of “Chapter Eight: The Abyss of Life,” Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) asked his faithful translator if she was ready to do her part in the name of the “Crimson Sky” strategy.
Wielding a Naginata against armored guards who sought to keep her and her fellow travellers from leaving the grounds, it’s a sequence of tension that showed the true strength behind Toranaga’s plans up until this point. Taking place over a short distance, the increasing difficulty of Mariko-sama’s battle is breathtaking, and required quite a bit of preparation.
Here’s more on how Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle prepared that scene, including a fantastic practical touch that could have been quite lethal and damaging:
We had our own rehearsal area, so I had the procession going, and leaving the castle, and we made walls with boxes and everything. We practiced there, and it all kind of started to dial in. And then when the previous episode was done shooting in the castle, then we had the castle location to go and rehearse that. We had to put a foam core floor in the center of it, because the arrows had to stick in. We were shooting some practical arrows into the ground, so we had to have something for them to be able to stick into. So we had to be careful not to wreck that while we were fighting and doing the whole battle.
That’s right! When Anna Sawai is walking in the path of those arrows as Mariko, those are actual arrows in use. Naturally, safety was a main concern, and the intense rehearsals helped maximize this effect on the day of the shoot.
The end result is quite stunning and still one of the most memorable moments of Shōgun’s entire limited series run. Which only makes the initial trolling from the internet upon the release of Chapter Nine’s preview all the more vexing.
As he continued to discuss Mariko’s castle showdown scene, Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle mentioned another interesting turn to this Shōgun moment, and it has to do with the official preview for this particular episode. The series’ stunt coordinator had noticed that in the comments on YouTube and other platforms sharing the video, there was a contingent of viewers who weren’t exactly anticipating the big Anna Sawai moment.
Lauro recalled his reaction to those comments, and how he tried to stem the tide without any spoilers, thusly:
When they showed a little tiny bit of that in the previews, it was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be crap. 'cause this little woman's gonna take out a bunch of Samurai and it's gonna be so fake, and it's woke,’ and it's this and that. I put little comments like, ‘Don't worry guys, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised. You know, it's gonna be way better than you think.’ I couldn't tell them anything but just, ‘Hang in there! Don't get disappointed just yet.’ … I was just shaking my head going, ‘You guys have no idea what's coming.’
Now there’s very little action to really parse out in the clip that was shown before "Crimson Sky" aired, and rightfully so. Watching the full extent of Anna Sawai’s physical performance in that particular scene is something that was probably kept as secret as possible. However, that doesn’t mean that it should have been unexpected.
As the flashbacks in “Chapter Six - Ladies of the Willow World” showed us, Todo Mariko was particularly adept with a Naginata. This also came up in CinemaBlend’s conversation with Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle, which saw him further explain how this moment fit into the context of Shōgun’s cultural accuracy, as well as its devotion to history:
Samurai women were trained with the Naginata, and so it's not out of context at all. So she's very good at it. But we also show that in a flashback where she was a teenager and she was the champion in competition. So it was set up properly, and quite well done. It all marks out throughout the series.
Lauro Chartrand-Del Valle’s confidence in Shōgun’s Mariko-centric battle paid off, and just in time for audiences to then have their hearts broken over Episode 9’s huge death scene. With all 10 episodes now streaming for those who have access to a Hulu subscription, it’s never a bad time to either start or catch up with the places that this journey has brought its loyal audience. Especially when one such destination involves the totally impressive battle skills of Ms. Anna Sawai.
