Shogun dominated the awards race in 2024, but for Marks, it was not the number of trophies that impressed him the most. “What was most encouraging was the enthusiastic response from the American audience,” he says.
The show faced significant barriers to US popularity—namely, the deep-rooted resistance to subtitles in the US, and the psychological distance from other cultures many Westerners feel. About 70 percent of the dialog was spoken in Japanese, and many of the principal cast members were actors not yet widely known in the United States.
The fact that the show nevertheless held viewers’ interest pleased Marks. “I think the viewers enjoyed the experience of discovering a culture they did not understand through the story," he says. “This is because the algorithm only presents choices that are similar to past choices, so choices that venture into an unknown culture are unlikely to be recommended in the first place.”
The success of Shogun showed that the desire for such “discovery” certainly existed.
Condou worked on the story with Marks (who is also her husband) both together and separately. “We worked on the script in different rooms, going back and forth from room to room. He would delete words and I would put them back in, and sometimes we would argue. But looking back, I think it was a really fun time,” she says.