Dear Gossips,    

Hiroyuki Sanada was out in New York yesterday for an appearance on Good Morning America to promote Shōgun, aka the best new series of 2024, and all its Emmy nominations (25 including Outstanding Drama and Lead Drama Actor for him). 

 

Toranaga-sama was humble and appreciative and he talked about how his character was based on shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who has been Hiroyuki’s lifelong inspiration. And the most important lesson that he took away from all his studies about Tokugawa Ieyasu is… patience. The patience to not get in your own way in your 20s and 30s and even 40s and 50s and or give up. The patience to savour the wins that come in your 60s, and to never think that a win comes too late. As we saw in Shōgun, Toranaga’s greatest strategic skill was patience. This a life lesson that’s true in fiction and in reality. 

 

 

If you’ve watched Shōgun, you know that translation is a vital part of the story. Mariko is a translator, but she translates selectively which tells us so much more about her character and also influences the choices of the characters she’s translating for. But Shōgun isn’t the only show in which translation is used to brilliant effect. There’s also Pachinko. As we saw in season one of Pachinko, especially when Sunja and her family are in crisis in Osaka, in the scenes that involve characters switching between Korean and Japanese, the writers and editors are selective about what they choose to subtitle in certain scenes and what they don’t, which adds to the confusion and the chaos that the characters are experiencing, heightening that experience for the viewer. This is masterfully done, one of the many reasons Pachinko is so f-cking good. 

 

The cast and crew of Pachinko have been in New York for screenings and other promotional events ahead of the new season. I was on the junket yesterday for ETALK (virtually) and, yes, I interviewed Lee Min Ho, one of Korea’s biggest stars whose popularity extends beyond East Asia given the explosive popularity of Korean content. There was a frenzy for him yesterday outside the screening, have a look: 

https://x.com/sleepytinkerxx/status/1823867955446472851
 

And this was the reaction to him inside the screening: 

 

This was a diverse crowd, mostly women, of all ages and ethnicities – and, frankly, they’re not being adequately serviced by western content creators and media. I’m amazed that Netflix is still so far ahead of the other networks and streamers in producing and acquiring East Asian content. Their library is much more extensive compared to the other major Hollywood/western platforms.  

As for the new season of Pachinko, I’ve seen the first two episodes. You will not be disappointed. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey 

 

 

Hiroyuki Sanada appears on Good Morning America, while Lee Minho, Minha Kim, and Jin Ha attend screenings and photo calls for Apple TV+'s "Pachinko" in New York.
Photo credits: Backgrid, Instar Images, Gary Gershoff/ Getty Images

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