The Big Picture

Season 2 of Tokyo Vice introduces new challenges and character growth, leading to more complex and compelling storytelling.
Authentic locations play a vital role in bringing the world of 90s Japan to life, showcasing the detailed and immersive production design.
The show seamlessly navigates between English and Japanese dialogue, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and cultural balance in storytelling.

With the first two episodes of Season 2 now streaming on Max, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down for an extended interview with the cast and creatives behind Max’s ’90s noir series Tokyo Vice at the SCAD TV festival in Atlanta. Stars Ken Watanabe, Ansel Elgort, Rachel Keller, and Shô Kasamatsu join series creator and executive producer J.T. Rogers and director and executive producer, Alan Poul to discuss how they bring the streets of ’90s Japan to life and what fans can expect in Season 2.

Inspired by the true account of American journalist Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice introduced viewers to a neon-washed world of the criminal underbelly of Tokyo in Season 1. We met Jake (Elgort), a determined young journalist who teamed up with Detective Hiroto Katagiri (Watanabe) to uncover a dangerous story about a deadly crime boss. In Season 2, Adelstein gets swept up in the underworld once again and realizes just how much is on the line this time.

Check out the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below where Elgort and Keller share the crash courses they took to learn the skills necessary for their roles, like learning Japanese and journalism. They talk about working with Michael Mann, filming in rural Japan to capture the aesthetic of the period, what they’re most excited for fans to see this season, and tons more.

Tokyo Vice A Western journalist working for a publication in Tokyo takes on one of the city’s most powerful crime bosses.Release Date April 7, 2022 Main Genre Crime

Read Our ‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2 Review

COLLIDER: I want to jump in with the most important question up front. I know that in Japan, whisky is a big thing. There’s a scene of you two drinking and you’re drinking Japanese whisky. How much did you debate what whisky to include and was it always going to be Hibiki?

KEN WATANABE: Yeah, 1990 it was not a favorite whisky in the world, Hibiki. Not yet. But Alan and the prop guy decided how great a whisky to show in the show in the world — shape and then favorite whisky right now, that’s how they chose it.

ALAN POUL: We looked at a lot of bottle shapes, but because Hibiki is so big now, we knew that people in the States would recognize it. And also, it’s a beautiful bottle.

It’s also delicious whisky.

WATANABE: : But inside of our tea.

[Laughs] So, everyone watching this right now kind of knows how the sausage is made. I’m curious if there’s anything that would surprise people to learn about the actual making of Tokyo Vice?

J.T. ROGERS: I would expect everyone would have some sense of, “Oh, you’re shooting a show in two languages and that must be complicated. Everyone learns different languages.” But I think if they were to be on set, or through the process and see how incredibly Byzantine it is, it’s amazing. Because not only do you have, for example, these two wonders learning and becoming near-fluent in Japanese, which allows the show to have a real authenticity to it, but everything is written. I write it in English, then it’s translated, just roughly translated into Japanese. Then specialists translate it into dialogue that is believable and would come out of the mouths of the characters, but a character who is a cop. How do they speak versus a character who is a gangster, versus a character who is a new reporter, versus how do you speak to someone who is younger than you versus someone who is older than you? Then after that’s all done, then Ken goes and puts his hand on everything to polish, to make sure it’s just right, and still, we will be on set and we’ll have to stop because Alan, who speaks fluent Japanese, will say, “J.T., I think the line is officially perfect, but it’s not the intention that you wanted.” And then we’ll have to stop and have a conversation. So, it takes a lot of people to make.

Related ‘Tokyo Vice’: Creator J.T. Rogers & Producer Alan Poul on Making a Crime Series in Japan Poul also talks about working on ‘Black Rain’ in the early 90s in Tokyo and how ‘Tokyo Vice’ faced some of the same challenges filming in Japan.

Is there anything else you guys want to add?

WATANABE: They’re such hard workers every day, every time learning about Japanese.

RACHEL KELLER: The other thing, too, is that we have a lot of the same crew from the first season into the second season. I was so glad that the women who dressed me and helped with the everyday stuff — hair and makeup and stuff — were as talented and dedicated and cool and just wonderful. I mean, my dresser was the first dresser on the first season, too, and we had this really awesome friendship that makes you feel safe and really collaborative on the ground. Of course we’re having bigger conversations with the designers and everything, but then you get that woman who’s right there with you in your face and your body and everything, and so having those relationships, many of them from the first season into the second season, was such a joy.

Steven Spielberg Warned Ansel Elgort About Working With Michael Mann

You never really know how a show is gonna turn out, no matter how good the scripts are or the directors, or all that stuff. When did you guys all realize, “Oh wait, this is gonna be something special and people are really gonna like it?”

ANSEL ELGORT: For me, in 2015 I went to Tokyo for the first time and I was blown away by the visuals of the city, and also the culture. And I thought, “Wow, if one day I could make something here, it would already be great in a certain way.” Like, you can’t mess up the visual of this place. All you gotta do is shoot. I was actually attached, originally, to a different project that shot in Japan, but it was a very Western kind of film. It wasn’t really about the Japanese culture, it didn’t really give you a behind-the-scenes and into Japan the way that this show does. And I read Tokyo Vice and it seemed to have all these backstories about pickpockets in Japan and how they took their job so seriously, and how they took it so professionally. It’s so different than a pickpocket in any other culture. I thought, “Wow, if this could be a series, it could basically be great, but we gotta get a really great director.”

Once Michael Mann was attached, obviously I’ve seen Heat and The Insider, and there’s so many great films, I asked Jamie Foxx and [Steven] Spielberg, who I was working with at the time, about Michael Mann, and they said, “He will work you harder than any director you’ve ever worked with.” I think once we got into prep with Michael, it was like, “Oh yeah, you should be taking Japanese 8 hours a day.” Luckily Alan was like, “Maybe 4 hours a day is enough.” He put me through a journalism crash course where it was, like, I was going out totally out of my comfort zone doing real stories in Los Angeles, writing with a police report, doing real interviews. It was the hardest I’d ever been worked, and so that was just in prep. And I thought, “Okay, this show is gonna be something special.” This guy is so dedicated to his work. He’s kind of like his characters, and kind of like Jake, just being obsessed with your work.

I also saw Oslo, which I thought was a great play. I went to the library in New York, the public’s art library, and I watched it there. So it just felt like such a great team of people. And obviously, Ken Watanabe being involved, it was like, I don’t know. I had faith in this show from the beginning, and it’s great that it did turn out. It’s something that we’re all really proud of and I think that in Season 2 it only gets better.

One of the things about the show is it does a great job of bringing you back in time to the late ‘90s in Tokyo. Can you all talk about what it’s like behind the scenes going for that gritty, authentic feel of being transported back in time?

POUL: Well, one of the great things about Tokyo is that the places that most people know, most Americans know, like Shinjuku, Shibuya, are very modern, up to the minute, full of digital billboards, and things that you’d have to very carefully erase to put them back in time. But the undiscovered Tokyo, especially the northern part of Tokyo, what they called the Old City, the Shitamachi, or downtown, is still pretty much the same as it was in the late ‘90s. Time hasn’t moved as quickly. So being able to go into some of those lesser known older neighborhoods and shoot was not only a way to go back in time, but also a way to lift the lid on a part of Tokyo that most people haven’t seen.

ROGERS: One of the things we really wanted to do in Season 2 is to just go back, just show more of the city. It became very clear in Season 1, to me, that the city itself was becoming a crucial character. Not just how beautiful it is — as Ansel said, it’s just like nowhere else — but it felt almost like a living character. So, let’s see more of it. Let’s have more on-location, let’s have scenes that would have been a walk-and-talk in an apartment building in Season 1, let’s put it outside on the street. It’s a huge logistical challenge, but I’m very proud of how much of the city, and how much of the city that’s not been seen before, is in Season 2.

WATANABE: Also, cars and props and [costumes] — everything is so back to the 1990s. It’s so difficult. My car is a Fairlady Z, it’s like a very old traditional sports car. Then so many things, and all researched to find a good car and prop. It’s tough work.

In the first episode of Season 1, there’s a scene going on but it hasn’t been resolved. There’s like an action bit involving the two of you guys. Are we catching up to that scene in Season 2, or is that something from a future season?

POUL: We will catch up.

ROGERS: A catching will happen. How’s that? [Laughs]

POUL: We don’t want to say which episode, but before you get to the end of Season 2, we will have come back to that point in time.

What’s interesting about that is it’s pretty — I’m going to use the term, it’s pretty ballsy to put something in Season 1 and not have it resolved until later. So, how did that decision come about?

ROGERS: I was very up front with Max, and said, “Look, I’ve got a long story and I’m gonna want to push some stuff. If we’re gonna do long-form storytelling, then let’s use long-form.” People have incredible patience if they care about the story. At least I do when I’m watching. So I said up front, “I’m gonna push that to Season 2. I’m gonna have this happen in Season 2.” There’s certain moments that we shot, little moments that happen early in Season 1, that the audience is gonna see happen in the last third of Season 2, and go, “Oh, look at that.” So it was all planned in the beginning, and I’m just glad we got to do two seasons.

When you went in originally, when this show got off the ground, how much did the network say, “Do you have a three-season plan? What’s your long-term on this show?” And how much is it sort of like, “Okay, just make a great first season and let’s see where it goes?”

ROGERS: Really, that. They didn’t put any pressure on me to go beyond that. But they’ve been enthusiastic since the beginning, and they’ve been super enthusiastic about Season 2, and really been great in that way, great.

POUL: And also, to Max’s credit, they had enough confidence that they allowed us to end the first season with a series of cliffhangers that were not resolved. They wouldn’t allow us to do that if they weren’t pretty confident that we’d be coming back for more.

So the audience watching right now will have seen the first two episodes. For each of you, including you, Shȏ, what do you all want to tease about Season 2 and what’s coming up in the next 8 episodes?

SHÔ KASAMATSU: In Season 2 you’re going to see a scene where the Chihara-kai go into the snow, and the things that happen there are very interesting and unexpected. So I think you’ll be really pleased when you see that scene.

ELGORT: It is very different than anything else that you’ve seen in Tokyo Vice because there’s not too much snow in Tokyo. So, it’s probably not in Tokyo.

WATANABE: The character Hayama appears there.

ROGERS: The character that we meet in Episode 2.

POUL: We introduce him in Episode 2, but we don’t see the full extent of his mental state.

Related Where to Watch ‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2: Premiere Date, Episode Schedule, and More With old friends and new foes, the reporter-detective duo returns to the neon-lit Tokyo underworld.

You’re doing a very good job explaining what’s coming. I’ve seen some of this and you’re very accurate.

ROGERS: I’m looking at all of you and the story arcs, so I’d say for Shȏ-san, who plays Sato, in terms of what you said, what do we look forward to — there’s a moment in Episode 2 when you first meet Hayama, who has come out of prison, and he says, “I’ll do what you want, oyabun.” As he sits down, his new nemesis just looks at him and looks at him. So the audience should track that. There’s a moment for her character, Samantha, when she says, “My club, my rules.” I think that’s really important to what’s gonna happen. [Watanabe’s] wife on the swing set in the middle of Episode 2 says “Are you gonna stay away from fighting the crime? Because you’re a good man, but you don’t know when to stop.” That we track. And for Jake, at the very end of Episode 2, he’s about to make love to his nemesis’ mistress, Tozawa’s mistress, and he whispers, “You know this is a really bad idea, right?” It is going to prove to be a bad idea.

KELLER: Good job.

ELGORT: That was cool.

KELLER: That was good.

I have so many follow-ups. The first season was 8 episodes and Season 2 is 10. Was that a Max decision or was that a result of storyline?

ROGERS: They were great. Totally a storyline. I mean, when we got to shooting 8 and we had two more to go, we were all a bit like, “Oh sweet lord…

POUL: J.T. just decided he wanted to kill us all.

ROGERS: [Laughs] I decided. But no, I just felt the story, to land the plane that I thought of in this part of the Tokyo Vice multiverse, shall we say, from all the way back from the first season, it needed 10. And they were great. They just said, “Okay, fine.”

You’ve obviously shot in Japan previously. I think you worked on Black Rain with Ridley Scott back in the day, which is amazing. But I’m curious, what is it like shooting in Japan versus shooting in America? Because I’m not familiar, do you guys still block shoot? What is it like? Do people keep normal hours or do they expect to work 14-hour days? What is it like over there?

ELGORT: There’s actually more normal hours than America, which is surprising. Because, of course, in Japan there’s an amazing work ethic, but there’s also a culture of, like…

ROGERS: We’re done now. [Laughs]

ELGORT: Yeah, we’re done and we take a nice break and we enjoy our lives at the end of the day.

POUL: And also, not to get too granular, but the crew is not unionized, and so they don’t get overtime pay. So sometimes the American crews are willing to work those dangerously long days because they’re racking up all that overtime pay.

WATANABE: Unfortunately. [Laughs]

POUL: In Japan, they don’t have that. The crew mostly works on a monthly contract. And so in return, our obligation is to give them a humane life and to not overwork them. That’s the sort of verbal contract side of it.

Related ‘Tokyo Vice’ Review: A Gripping Series That Lives in the Moments Between Acts of Violence HBO Max has struck gold with this addictive series featuring an ensemble cast and a brilliant narrative.

As people involved, do you find it a better work environment because people are only doing eight or 10 hours? I don’t know what the day is.

ROGERS: Oh, it’s never eight.

POUL: It’s still 12 hours. 12 hours from call to wrap every day.

So do you guys find a difference over there?

WATANABE: Not a lot. Acting is acting. And a good script, I follow [Rogers]. But he just told me about how we don’t have a union. So it’s a little bit of hard work we need to shoot.

I heard when you guys went back for Season 2 that you were greeted warmly by everyone in Tokyo. Do you have any anecdotes that you can share about your greeting when you went back?

POUL: Well, I’m officially designated as a tourism ambassador for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and that would not have happened on Season 1. It’s because the governor of Tokyo likes the show and the show is a success in Japan. And so J.T. and Ken-san and I went to her office to meet her. She put on a Tokyo Vice happi coat and I was later presented with a business card saying, “You are a tourism ambassador for Tokyo.”

What has been the reception in Tokyo and in Japan for this show?

ELGORT: It’s been a really great reception. It’s not yet a big show. I mean, it’s not really a big show in the rest of the world either yet, but the people who have seen it, they really like it. The reason they really like it is they think it’s authentic, which is something that we’re so glad to hear because we really went for authenticity with this show. And then on top of that, we had a huge budget. I mean Japanese dramas that shoot maybe sometimes a similar story about a detective and Yakuza kinds of stories, I heard from Wowow — I don’t know if this is exact — that per episode, the budget is about $250,000 for the whole episode. I think our budget per episode was about $10 million an episode…

POUL: No. You’re shooting too high.

ROGERS: I would have liked that.

ELGORT: Okay, well we were able to do really high production quality. And as a result, I think people were pleased that not only were we authentic, but also, like, “Wow, it feels like we’re watching a movie.”

ROGERS: What’s great about that is, and from what they were talking about, the crew and the fact that the crew, from the dressers to the DPs, to everyone coming back, they have invested in the show. Most everyone working on this show is Japanese. The cast — I mean these are the two Western actors in the show, right? — the crew, the designers are all Japanese. So it really is a Japanese show. We’re making this hybrid sort of Western show, but in the spirit, and not just the spirit but the working hours and the style, which is very different culturally than the West. That authenticity thing that Ansel’s speaking about is, so many times people on the crew, actors in the cast came to me and said, “This is the best Japanese TV show I’ve ever been involved in.” And that really meant a lot to me. But they just assume, “Well, we’re making a Japanese show.”

WATANABE: Definitely.

I personally think it looks like a movie as I watch.

ROGERS: We have very good directors on this show.

POUL: And directors of photography.

Ansel Elgort Learned Kanji for ‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2

I’m so curious, when you saw the scripts for Season 2 — and this is for everyone — and you saw what you’re gonna be doing, what was the day you had circled in terms of, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to film this,” or, “Oh my god, how are we gonna film this?”

WATANABE: Sato, Shȏ Kasamatsu’s fight to the mad Yakuza in the bath.

ROGERS: There’s a big fight scene with Shȏ that we don’t want to talk too much about.

WATANABE: Is he naked or not?

POUL: There’s a scene in a bath house that we can’t say much more about. But if you read it, you would be like, “How are they gonna do that?”

What about you guys?

KELLER: I was so excited to get into my new club. I really loved the wood and the green that they designed the club with. It felt so like what Samantha would have wanted. It was kind of her domain, her kingdom, her space of safety for these women. It was really nice to get into that space.

Also, when Sam is on set there’s either the, like, leather jacket, motorcycle vibe, which is nice and comfortable and cool, and then there’s these gorgeous… This season was amazing. I mean they hand-painted some of these dresses, hand-crafted, hand-painted.

ROGERS: So beautiful.

KELLER: There’s one that’s silver with bamboo, and I was so moved, really, by the craftsmanship in that. Then the hair team — I shared with them some photos of some design stuff, because often in the club we’re doing these really gorgeous kinds of big long shots where they’re definitely going to be behind me for a lot of it. And so I just got really into some of the ‘90s runway shows where they kind of architecturally designed the back, like these buns and hair and stuff. So the hair and makeup team went to Kyoto and got these Jade combs to put in, and I cried. They had tons of them and I had shown them one photo and they brought back the most gorgeous combs for the back of my hair. And it was really, I don’t know, just a moving movement of collaboration. You share a small thing and then they bring all of these gorgeous, really authentic Kyoto… They gave me one at the end — cried again. So the club and Sam’s mama-san look and vibe. That was always quite nerve-wracking, but really nice and fun.

ELGORT: This season I play a newspaper reporter, so I wanted to work more on my writing. So I spent a lot of time working on Kanji and also being able to write really fast. So I have a few interview scenes that I was preparing for since the beginning. I have an amazing sensei, and we worked on writing the Kanji. We would do the scenes, and it was almost like with a timer. It was like he would read the lines and I would have to write really quickly his lines. He would go faster and faster and faster, because people might say it really fast. I needed to be able to do the scene, say my lines, be in the scene, but also write down everything that they were saying quickly in Kanji.

KELLER: Cool.

ELGORT: So I did that in about three scenes. I mean, you hardly even see it.

POUL: You see it in the motorcycle shot in Episode 2.

ROGERS: It’s funny, because I remember watching it yesterday, just clocking it, and you talking about it, like, “Please make sure we shoot me because I’ve been practicing.” And you see that moment. It’s small, but it lands. You see the realism of it.

ELGORT: Yeah, just trying to make it more authentic. That took a lot of practice, but it felt good. It felt like, “Yeah, I’m really doing this.” Because it’s the ‘90s, we’re not taking notes on our phones or even recording. I guess we could have recorded, and we record a little in Season 1, but I felt like really writing and taking little notes on a notepad in the language would be really cool.

ROGERS: I was very excited in the first episode just writing them and getting ready to produce for all of them. I was very excited to see the moment when Shȏ and Rachel see each other for the first time in Episode 2, and the audience has been waiting for that. Just the silence and this remarkable acting, and just all things that are not said that are supposed to be happening. And I couldn’t wait to see the very last scene of Episode 1 when Ken wreaks vengeance on the vice minister. The shot is described, “Katagiri walks towards the camera, walks towards the camera, blackout. End of episode.”

WATANABE: When I read the script, it was just, “This is not Katagiri!”

ROGERS: But you made it Katagiri. And then for Ansel, I just found I couldn’t wait — and we talked about at the first table reading — just to see him sing the song and be the Australian. I mean, it’s so unexpected for the audience, it was like, “How is that gonna come out?” So, I look forward to all those moments.

POUL: For me there were two things. One was working with Rachel to unveil the new club. When we built the club, we actually built it and designed it so that it had that corridor coming out of it that went all the way back through the dressing room to the bathroom, so that we could do that shot that’s at the beginning of Episode 2, where it starts with her holding the ponytail of the vomiting hostess. Then following the beautifully sculpted back of her head all the way down the corridor until she comes into the club. That’s the first time we get the full splendor of the club, so that was great.

The other is the shot that opens the season, which actually took six months to accomplish. The boat shot that finally ends up in Katagiri’s living room. We grappled for a long time to figure out what was the best way to bring the audience back into the story. What was the best way to open the episode? Should it be Sato in the hospital? We finally came up with this idea in collaboration with Corey Walter, our brilliant DP, to just start with a beautiful shot of Tokyo Bay and somehow end up in Katagiri’s living room with the two of them watching what we saw at the end of Episode 8.

ROGERS: Yeah, and that took six months to get that right.

Related ‘Tokyo Vice’s Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe on Making a Series in Both Japanese and English and What Sequence They’ll Always Remember They also talk about why the material works better as a series and how the COVID shutdown improved the show.

This is a no-spoiler answer, but try to see what we can do. When the Season 2 finale ends, what do you think audiences will be saying?

POUL: They’ll be saying, “We need more.”

ELGORT: No, they won’t be saying we need more. No, they will, but they won’t.

ROGERS: Yes. I know what you’re saying.

ELGORT: Because at the end of Season 1, it’s like, “Wait…” People were saying, “But I didn’t get Episodes 9 and 10.” Which, that was a little bit disappointing, I think. But people will not be disappointed at the end of Season 2. You will be satisfied. You’ll feel like the show ended at a great place. Yes, of course you would make a sequel. I’m sure we could go on, but it’s not like you need to in order to wrap up the story. People will be like, “Oh wow, that was great and I’m satisfied.” At least that’s how I feel.

I’ll still want Season 3. I’m letting you know in advance.

ROGERS: No pressure.

‘Tokyo Vice’ Stars Learned Japanese for Their Roles
Image via Max

But I’m curious, you guys learned Japanese. You guys now can speak it. What is it actually like being able to be in Tokyo and speak Japanese? I’ve been to Tokyo and I love Tokyo, but I only dream about being able to speak. I’m just curious what it’s like being there and enjoying the culture.

KELLER: It’s very freeing. I mean the second season coming back, to be able to actually communicate, even in a not perfect way, it was very freeing.

ELGORTl: Yeah, now I’m at the point where I definitely can speak and I can communicate, but now I’m at the point where maybe people think I’m better than I am. And sometimes I speak, especially with, like, an ojisan, which means kind of like an uncle, like an older guy, and they don’t speak to me– If someone’s not speaking to me like I’m a foreigner, like, “Let me speak clearly to you so you understand,” and they just go and change subjects and this and that, I’m still so lost. And Ken says this is, like, one of the hardest languages in the world. Now, at this point, I’ve been studying this language pretty hard for about four years, and it is still a long way to go.

You do come across like you know it.

KELLER: He does.

ELGORT: I know it, but there’s a lot more to learn.

KELLER: It’s so rich.

ELGORT: I talk about writing kanji. I mean it’s not like the alphabet. I’ve already learned hiragana, katakana. Those two alphabets are 26 letters. Now kanji, you’ve got to learn, like, 1,500 or 2,000 letters in order to really read a newspaper.

KELLER: It’s the only language with three alphabets, right?

Wow.

KELLER: And they’re all mixed in together on signs and menus.

ROGERS: Yeah, just for fun.

I’m fascinated by the editing process because that’s where everything comes together. So talk a little bit about how the show has changed in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect and what you learned.

ROGERS: The old saying is true, that you make a movie or a TV series three times. You make it on the page, you remake it when you shoot it, and then you remake it in the editing room. So there’s sections and parts narratively, in terms of larger building blocks, where things are very much as they were structured in an episode on the page or when we shot it. But there’s certain moments and whole episodes where we move things around tremendously, because it just tells you that it needs to change. And sometimes you literally can take someone’s line or a shot from Episode 3 and work it into Episode 5, and it’s amazing. It just keeps changing and changing in the editing process draft after draft.

POUL: Yeah, and that’s always true, but one of the big things we learned in Season 2 is that because the show is so dense there’s one kind of conventional wisdom that says write much more than you can ever fit into the episode; shoot much more than you can ever fit. And then you just cut out stuff to get it down to length. But because this show is so dense and interconnected the way that it’s written, we made the scripts shorter for Season 2 so that we didn’t have to painfully drop scenes, so that we could really follow the story as it was written.

ELGORT: Except there was one scene that we prepped for so long. To answer your question about which scene we were like, “Oh my god, how am I going to do that?” There is a scene at the beginning of Episode 3 where Jake is getting interviewed on television, and that was, like, the densest. I mean I learned so much vocabulary from doing this, so it’s okay, but it was just dense with really fluent Japanese about education and regional issues, and very intelligent real [issues]. It’s Jake talking about the motorcycle gang on a television broadcast. Anyway, that was like multiple, multiple paragraphs, and you watch it and I get about two sentences in, they cut to me, I turn off the TV for some reason, and we never get to see all that.

POUL: But they’re brilliantly performed sets.

ELGORT: Thank you.

I know what scene you’re talking about, and I’m so sorry.

ELGORT: It was about a 4-minute interview.

The positive is you learned more about Japanese.

ELGORT: I learned a lot, yeah.

There’s No Rest for the Wicked in ‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2

One of the things about the first season is Jake is very hungry to prove himself and he’s willing to do basically whatever to get a scoop. Has he changed at all in Season 2? Has he learned any sort of discipline? Where is he at mentally with the newspaper job?

ELGORT: At the end of Season 1, I think he’s realized, “I’ve just gotten beaten up.” He’s angry, but I think he’s upset with himself too. He sees this tape of Paulina being killed and he doesn’t know where else to go. He goes to Katagiri and he kind of asks for forgiveness and also says, “However you want to do this, we’re gonna do it your way.” And it’s the first time that I think Jake is humbled. But then we have Episode 1 of Season 2 and things don’t go their way, and Jake is still really upset and he still really wants to chase things. And Katagiri says, “The only thing we can do now is wait.” And when you pick up in Episode 2, you realize that Jake has been waiting, and for the first time he’s doing things by the book. He’s at the newspaper office; he’s listening to his bosses, like Katagiri says, and he’s not going after the Yakuza. He has a choice between the motorcycle gang and the Yakuza and he goes after the gang instead. So he learns patience; he’s humbled. He’s respecting his role, and those are qualities that are totally different from the Jake that we see in Season 1. And it’s through learning those qualities that I think they’re able to be successful in Season 2 in what they’re trying to do.

WATANABE: You learn something really dangerous about the investigation of the Yakuza, and then need to be patient and wait. Then we try for the next opportunity to investigate something. Then we try to get together.

Ken, there is a new detective that has joined the force that’s your superior. How does your character balance what’s going on with his family, the threats that have been against him, with trying to do his job and maintain not being corrupted by the Yakuza?

WATANABE: The new character is Nagata, a detective who’s female. She wants to involve the fall of the Yakuza society or something.

ROGERS: Smash it.

WATANABE: Smash it. Yeah, she has some kind of background of sadness, personal sadness. Then, I join her project.

ROGERS: Spoilers, spoilers… It’s a brand-new relationship. It was purposely built. Let’s have a female detective in a super male profession, Japanese police force in the late ‘90s. Let’s have a comes-out-swinging female character that can be a peer to Ken as an actor and to Katagiri, and just see what that opens up the show.

Samantha has the club, but she has the Yakuza as a partner. She’s trying to do things in a new way to treat the women that work for her with a lot of respect in a safe environment, but can you sort of talk about that balance that comes with having the Yakuza as a partner and what she’s going through?

KELLER: She’s saved up all this money to own the club herself, but then that money was stolen from her and she kind of barrels through to open the club. It’s very important to her and for her own protection, but for these women, as well. But I guess as you were speaking I was thinking that Sam sort of has, like, a fire lit under her the entire season, because she has these external pressures. Her back’s against the wall. There’s really no other option. They push her into these very difficult situations of having to make choices just for herself and for the women around her, which I think is kind of dramatic and interesting. It’s nice to play those things, because I guess it’s not quite how she had planned it to be. But it pushes her into difficult situations and has to make some hard choices. I quite like that she gets things done the way that she does. I think it’s difficult sometimes to think about that American ambition, and, “I’m gonna get it done my way, because I’m American and I know how to do that,” inside of a Japanese culture where there’s different boundaries. And she respects that and understands it; but she’s gonna barrel forward and get it done her way. So I think that’s super interesting.

Yeah, there’s scenes that I would love to talk to you about, but like the thing that I took away from the episodes is that she’s someone with honor and wants to treat people around her with honor in a very dangerous place.

KELLER: I like that.

ROGERS: That’s good.

KELLER: I think so. Yeah. I mean, it’s such a layered thing to be a foreigner somewhere starting a business — a woman anywhere trying to start a business. A foreign woman in another country starting a business, signing the deal with the devil. Having the Yakuza be the part owner of the club. It’s this really sticky situation, and she is coming from being caged into a belief system that doesn’t allow any space for her own expression or own individuality or autonomy, so the club is meant to do that. But it is sort of a bit smoke-and-mirrors, because it really isn’t hers. And that’s the thing that she is fighting for mostly.

She does come to learn that freedom, or independence, doesn’t necessarily mean owning something. But sometimes you need that tangible thing in order to hold onto something so that you can say to yourself, “I’ve accomplished something and I do have that independence now. And all these women do as well.” It’s something she learns along the way, that maybe she can get it in other ways.

ROGERS: It’s so much fun after we’ve done it to hear you guys talk about the journey of the character you went through. You lived it from the page to the screen, so it’s neat.

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I’m curious for each of you, there’s 8 episodes left of Season 2 that people have not seen. So which episode of 3 through 10 are you most looking forward to audiences seeing?

KASAMATSU: If audience watches Episode 2, I want to show you Episode 3. And then if the audience watches Episode 4, I want to show Episodes 4, 5, 6, like that. So every episode is so beautiful and the episodes have super powers.

POUL: That’s really well said, brother.

KASAMATSU: Everything is so good.

ROGERS: I was gonna do a lame version of that.

KELLER: I love that.

WATANABE: When I read the script, I was always surprised. “Oh, Tozawa is back?” [Laughs] Yeah. And then, the next one is, “Oh, this is big hits…”

ROGERS: Ah! I feel like I’m the spoiler police.

At least I’m not the one saying it.

POUL: No, but we can’t say why.

ROGERS: We can’t say. But I think Shȏ is right. That’s the thing, for me it all builds each one and one and one and one. I’m very excited for people to get to see them.

ELGORT: I really like Episode 9. I’m not sure. I can’t remember exactly which episode it is, but I think it’s 9. And the reason is, and this is gonna sound political or whatever, but I have great scenes with Shȏ and I have great scenes with Ken, and I have great scenes with Rachel.

WATANABE: All of the characters meeting, the complex storytelling.

ELGORT: Everyone comes together.

ROGERS: This season is structured so that all the stories are [spread out] and then they all come in, and characters that have never been in the same room together, everyone crosses, one hopes, in an organic way and is working towards the same goal by the tenth episode.

Yes, I cannot wait. I’m being completely sincere. I got to see the first five, and so I’m so curious about how it goes.

How They Scout the Perfect Locations for ‘Tokyo Vice’
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One of the things about making a television show, and even a movie, is that a lot of the limelight shines on each of you, but there are so many people behind the scenes that do such amazing work that don’t get enough credit. So for each of you, I want to shine the light on an unsung hero that did something that really helped make this show what it is.

KELLER: Tomo Kawaguchi. She was our dialect coach on this and she’s like my best friend now. I’m just convinced the show could not have happened without her. She was not only doing the coaching for us, or for us in the Japanese, but also the Japanese actors with their English. But also translating for cinematographers in production meetings. She was always there. I’m just convinced it couldn’t have happened without her.

KASAMATSU: His name is Surata-san. Surata-san helped me always. He said a lot of good things every day on the set. I like his acting style and his attitude on the set. Sometimes he’s so scary, but sometimes he’s so super. He has superpowers, so I like him.

ELGORT: I would say [Kikuo] Ohta-san, who is our production designer, because when you go into the Mainichi Shimbun office — I mean, I’m so sad they took that away. They should have just kept that as a tourist place, because you really are transported. It’s 360 degrees, completely immersed in a ‘90s newspaper office. All the details — every desk there’s details, there’s books…

ROGERS: It’s mind-blowing.

ELGORT: It is just amazing. He did all the sets, all the production design. It’s part of what makes this show so great. So, to Ohta-san.

ROGERS: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, there’s so many. The first one that comes to mind is Kazuko-san [Kurosawa], our costume designer, speaking of the beautiful. Kazuko-san, just working with her, watching her work with her sons who work with her, is just incredible. Incredible work. The dresses she did for all of the hostesses, but especially for Samantha’s character. Just the time she and I would spend, like, “Tie clip for this guy, no tie clip for this guy?” I would try to say, “Kazuko-san, I love the yellow tie that you’ve showed, and I know what you’re doing.” She’s like, “Oh, I’m so glad you paid attention to the yellow tie, J.T.” Just really quite special. I mean, I sound political what I’m saying, but literally, there’s a hundred people you could say this about. It was so moving every day on set just standing and watching people work. It’s amazing.

WATANABE: I heard about this project 8 years ago in London? I played in The King and I, a Broadway show, and then J.T. Rogers came to London and his friend is Bartlett Sher, the director of The King and I. Then he told me about this project, and then I was like, “Hmm, it’s a detective and the Yakuza. Mmm…” But it’s completely a different perspective of the journalist wanting to see the underground society. “Oh, it’s amazing project.” And I followed him. And then he pulled out this project. I admire him.

ROGERS: Thank you, Ken-san.

POUL: I wanted to see who everybody else was gonna pick first so I could know who was left out. So I would call out Masanori Aikawa, who was our supervising location manager, who really, really went to the mat for us to get all those incredible locations and do all those four-month long negotiations with the police. He was going very…

WATANABE: Very appreciative.

POUL: He was going to see the cops every day for hours and cultivating politicians, and just really gave up his life to make sure that we could get into places people hadn’t gotten into before. And it’s all there on screen.

Related 7 Shows like ‘Tokyo Vice’ to Watch Next For More Gritty Crime Stories No virtue without the vice.

Your show, I think, is like 70% location, and it’s one of the reasons why it looks so amazing and why people believe in what you’re selling. So what is it like, as you said, with those locations, negotiating with the different people? I don’t know how it is in Japan getting a location versus America. Did you find more people willing to give you a location after Season 1?

POUL: Yes, but just as a small example of what the process is, and why we had to have such a big location team, directors usually want to be shown several possibilities for a location for a scene. So the scouts go out and they have to cultivate those contacts and make nice with the local people just to get the idea that we would have permission to shoot there. And then they bring the photos back and they show it to the director and the director says, “No, no, no, yes.” Those three no’s, those same location managers have to go back with gifts of sweets and apologize to those people for not having selected their locations. So that’s the level of labor intensiveness.

Do you ever try to, not recycle, but use that location for something else?

ROGERS: That’s a good question.

POUL: Yes, you can. You can reapproach, but then that’s an extra apology. “We apologize for not using you, now we’re gonna add another inconvenience by coming back after you’ve been hurt and asking you again.”

ROGERS: And, even when we get a location, and we fall in love, it’s not just you have the exponential problem of saying, “We’d really, really love to use your street, but we’d actually like to use it seven times because a character lives on that street,” so to speak. So then you have to go through that. So it’s a lot. So Masanori is a great person to call out because he and his team really did remarkable work.

One of the things that I find fascinating about the show is that conversations will start in Japanese, go to English, or start in English, go to Japanese. Is that all on the page? How much are you guys figuring out in the moment while you’re actually having the conversation where you’re actually like, “This line should be in English?”

ELGORT: In Season 1, I was acting like Jake who just kind of did what he thought. I would usually learn the scenes in both Japanese and English and then do some takes in Japanese and some takes in English. But then this season I would usually speak to Ken and to J.T. before, and Ken would have the final say as to whether he thought, “You shouldn’t do this in Japanese because we need your emotion, and you’re better emotionally in English.” But there’s also certain, like when Jake was being Japanese, sometimes he uses being Japanese as a tactic, and then you need to speak in Japanese. But I would audition the lines with Ken first this season and then he would give me the go-ahead or not. But we still often did scenes where, “Okay, let’s try it both ways.” And it was nice, because if you did a scene five times where you said the line in Japanese and then J.T. would say, “Okay, come on Ansel, just do it once in English.” And then I would just say it once in English and I hadn’t said it before in English, really. And sometimes then it would come out so organic and then it would kind of help the performance.

ROGERS: I mean, it was great in post. You’re talking about having to do this back and forth, but again, to the specificity in trying to be authentic, we would have conversations. Because the most sort of blending back and forth of languages was between these two characters on purpose in the devising of the show. Often perhaps there’s an emotional outburst on Jake’s part, but in rare exception, Katagiri as the senior person in the scene is the one who, without calling attention to it, switches language. Because that is how it would be in real life.

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WATANABE: And we need to take a balance of the back and forth to the language. Subtitles, no, subtitles, no, and it’s such a very sensitive moment to the audiences. Then we take this part back in English, this part back in Japanese, or something. We always discuss the language.

ROGERS: And the hope is that the audience sees nothing, that the audience is just flowing with the story. That’s what we want…

WATANABE: That it’s natural.

ROGERS: We do all this discussion and different takes and back and forth, and, “Would Sam speak to Masa?” This character that you meet in Episode 2. You know, when would they speak in English and Japanese? And then we just want the audience not to think about it. That’s the hope at least.

The first two episodes of Tokyo Vice Season 2 are available to steam on Max.

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