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Shōgun Episode 8 “Abyss of Life” marked a turning point for the series. Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) revealed his ultimate strategy to Mariko (Anna Sawai), while Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) found himself both repulsed by his former shipmates and disillusioned with Toranaga’s seeming defeatism. However, the latest installment of the FX hit also marked the screen debut of two characters you might not have even noticed.
As Blackthorne is led to where the remaining members of the Erasmus crew have been living in Edo — the dreaded funayado — they pass drunkards and prostitutes. Right before the scene wherein Blackthorne reunites with Salamon (Dakota Daulby), we pass the wisp of a prostitute in the right hand corner of the screen.
This is none other than “Experienced Prostitute #2,” played by Shōgun co-creator Rachel Kondo. Kondo’s fellow Shōgun co-creator and husband Justin Marks blew up her spot earlier this week on Twitter, posting a photo of Kondo posing with a grinning Cosmo Jarvis.
When Decider caught up with the Shōgun co-creators this week, we asked Kondo about the experience, which briefly took her aback since she had no clue Marks had shared the photo online.
“Did you Twitter that??” Rachel Kondo asked Marks. “I thought you put that on the family photo album!”
Justin Marks very cooly copped to sharing Kondo’s cameo with the world and explained the only photos he doesn’t post are those of their kids. “Because basically I have lots of photos of our kids in various locations from Shōgun,” Marks said. (Adorable!)
Once she was over the shock that the photo was out there, Kondo was more than game to talk about her big onscreen debut in Shōgun Episode 8 “Abyss of Life.”
“No, but people would look at me like, ‘Oh, that look, you do look like an old, haggard prostitute.’ Like it was so bad,” Kondo said.
“‘Experienced Prostitute’ was our nice way of saying ‘old whore,’” Marks said, before sharing that Shōgun producer Eriko Miyagawa also played ‘Experienced Prostitute #1” in the same scene (although her appearance seems to have been left on the cutting room floor).
“And I’m ‘Experienced Prostitute #2,’” Kondo said proudly. “And actually we called ourselves Jennifer and Jasmine and we thought maybe we should get publicists because…I have not heard a lot mentioned about Jennifer and Jasmine recently.”
In case you think Kondo is just inventing the characters names off the top of her head, she maintained that Shōgun‘s penchant for detail extended to her brief cameo.
“I mean, it was funny because they did it thoroughly. We had hair and makeup consultations, we had fittings, we discussed their back stories,” Kondo said. “And when they told me to do a bow as a Japanese person would, I tried it, and they were like, ‘Oh no, switch.’”
“Eriko became the first bow,” Marks chimed in, explaining that the Japanese-born Miyagawa got a last minute promotion.
“Yeah, she got the first proper bow and then it was me,” Kondo said, before wistfully recalling the end of her Shōgun debut.
“Just when we were feeling like we were falling into this role and we were ready to keep going and digging, they were like, ‘That’s a wrap!’ Everybody popped us out and we were just like, ‘What? What?! All that for five minutes?’”
“It was like three hours,” Marks said.
And now it’s just a split second in Shōgun Episode 8 “Abyss of Life”…but one we’re sure Kondo will remember forever.
