Anna Sawai is crying. But she is not simply crying; she’s crying about another time she cried. It was at the 2024 Emmys, when the now 34-year-old became the first person to publicly identify as being of Asian descent to win the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Sawai received the Emmy (and the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award) for her work playing the translator Toda Mariko in FX’s Shōgun.
Sawai does not cry the way Mariko cries. Mariko is self-protective, and her tears are a rare resource reserved for private moments with the few people she trusts enough to be vulnerable in front of. Sawai’s tears are as common as her peals of giggles, ready for duty and prone to pouring out whenever she experiences any strong sensation, which is almost always. As Shōgun co-creator Rachel Kondo tells me, “Anna’s a crier because she’s a feeler.”
