In all the years I’ve been covering entertainment, I had never interviewed principals from a show during the Emmy voting period who had their show unexpectedly canceled (by MAX in this case) while promoting that show. Such is the case regarding my interview with Executive Producer / Director Alan Poul, and show creator JT Rogers from Tokyo Vice. Being a person who adores the show, it was a tough pill for me to swallow. That being said, after two magnificent seasons, and all the ideas Alan and JT have for the series going forward, it had to be much tougher for them. However, the key bit of information here is that Tokyo Vice is not dead, merely sleeping. The show’s production company FIFTH SEASON is in talks with other networks to extend the series into a third season and perhaps beyond.
While talking to Alan and JT, we discuss what they’ve already accomplished in two seasons, as well as where the show might go if it is picked up by another network. This interview is not a wake. Hope is very much alive.
Awards Daily: This is an interesting time to be meeting with the two of you. We’re in the middle of Emmy season and PR is working to get Emmy nominations for folks that are attached to the show. To find that you’ve been canceled by the network, MAX, in the middle of this promotional period, I’ll leave it over to you. Tell me how you feel about this moment.
Alan Poul: I can say that the timing was always going to be awkward. Speaking for our friends at MAX, yes, we are not coming back. I don’t think it’s inaccurate that the press has jumped on the word cancellation, but it’s not a word that they have ever used. As far as they are concerned, this show completed a two season arc, and so in that sense there was no great timing to announce that. We’re still doing a full force FYC campaign and hoping to get some nominations, which MAX is very much behind. They would love to see the show recognized in any way possible. It just happens that there was a decision that had been made that they’re not going to continue with it. It’s just that the television landscape has changed so greatly that it was like, when would it have been a good time? There’s no answer to that.
JT Rogers: We parted ways with gratitude, and they love us and we love them, and I’m really not just blowing smoke. But Alan and I really want to make more. I would love to make more. I see more story. I’ve already sketched out, and in some cases more than sketched out, more story. We have the source. There’s still stories in the book. There’s endless stories that aren’t in the book that I know about from Jake (Adelstein – author of the “Tokyo Vice” memoir, played by Ansel Elgort on the show) for decades that we talk about all the time. There’s his book, “The Last Yakuza.” I asked for it because I wanted to keep building out the world. There’s characters that were invented on cloth by me that are in the show, but come out of that world. And it’s an extraordinary group of actors, extraordinary collaborators. We have a terrific partner in FIFTH SEASON, and they’re determined to find a new home for it. We put ourselves in their hands. And it’s early days, obviously. But now that this is official, it’s like okay, now the engine starts and we all push forward. We’re grateful and very moved by how much anguish we see from the fans because it’s been extraordinary, especially the second season, how much it’s just hit a nerve with people all over the world. I think it’s important to note that FIFTH SEASON is the studio and Max aired the show in North America and South America and I think another territory too. Alan is better about this than I am. But the vast part of the planet, Canal Plus in France, BBC in the UK, on and on, is done through FIFTH SEASON. So really there is a lot of life and interest going forward. So we’ll just have to see.
Awards Daily: Obviously you’re in the early stages and you may be talking to some potential partners, and I’m not trying to get you to say anything you shouldn’t say. I know that you have to be careful here, but are you picking up some notes of enthusiasm, shall we say, from other people?
Alan Poul: I would say that we have to really be really cautious because this is a sensitive time and we have put our faith in our partners at FIFTH SEASON and there are conversations that are taking place. There is a great sense of support from our fans and from the public and from audiences in the various territories where the show airs around the world, but it would be inappropriate to say anything beyond that except that there are conversations that are taking place.
Awards Daily: Tokyo Vice and The Bear are my two favorite shows on television. Everything else is a distant third. I was crestfallen, I think in part because I had spoken to Jake pre-announcement. One of the ideas that he said that you were kicking around with him was the idea of making maybe a three year jump from where you left off. What thoughts did you have about what Season 3 might look like?
JT Rogers: I have thoughts that don’t always align with the original source material. I’ll put it that way. (Laughs). And we love Jake. I’ve known Jake since I was in high school. I don’t want to say too much because I’m still building it. I’m the guy that tries not to read the reviews of anything before I go. That’s more satisfying. And also, write a thing before you talk about it. I will say that a lot has been already thought out and built out. What I love so much about the first two seasons, as I see them, is having the chance to keep building out and building out a world. We start with the first episode. Oh, it’s a show about this one white guy in Japan. Oh actually, episode two, it’s not. Pay attention. Things are different. And so we build out through season one and then even more so. The capo’s that work for Ishida under Sato become major characters, for example, in season two. One of my touchstones as a maker of TV is The Wire. Among other reasons why I love it is its Balzacian nature, where it just expands and characters keep looping back and subcultures keep looping back and you get a sense of actually being in a multifaceted world. So we will keep going and expanding and there are new characters and many of our old characters, and I think that’s really all I should say.
Alan Poul: To have a blank canvas is such a great luxury because you have so many building blocks and where exactly to put them down and have them come back to the starting gate. There are so many different possibilities, and as JT said, there’s a lot of basic stuff that’s already mapped out, but there’s still many different possibilities to explore. The other thing that’s worth pointing out in this vein is that, as has been reported, Ansel only signed up for two seasons initially. I know how much he loves the show, I’m not going to speculate about his particular thoughts at this moment. But the rest of the cast signed up for three seasons. They all have options for a third season in their deals. So getting the gang back together is not a problem.
JT Rogers: And it’s really moving. I’m constantly being asked, for months, by directors, by crew members, by actors in Japan. When are we going? When are we starting? Let me just do some writing first. Let me get some writing done. But it’s great. It was an extraordinary experience making it. And you really felt that as an entire team. It’s what you want, right? It’s the kind of experience you want to make television to have. The kind of set you want to have.
Awards Daily: In a funny way, the two shows that I love the most, Tokyo Vice and The Bear, did a similar thing in the second season where the first season was linchpinned around a single character, and as the season went on, you learn more and more about those around him. The second season really feels like a true ensemble. And then that gives you so many options. And I think, there’s always the fact that this is Jake’s story, right? So there has to be a white guy who’s a reporter, but you avoided any sort of criticism around the idea of cultural appropriation by expanding it and by making the other characters so interesting.
JT Rogers: Yeah, thank you, because that was very much on purpose and much fretted over creatively. The show starts as a classic model of the fish out of water, but of course we’re already starting with a fish that’s fluent in the language and has been there for years, so we can leap ahead of that. From the moment I pitched the show to MAX, I said this is a genre show made by me, so you know it’s not going to be exactly a genre show. It’s going to be character driven, and it is going to be an ensemble show with Jake as the first among equals, but I’m going to keep building the ensemble. All of that is by design, but also, a show teaches you what it is as you make it, and as the writer and creator of the character, you continue to fall in love with more and more people and wonder what they’re up to, as it were. New characters arrive because the nature of storytelling, and certainly in a long form TV, is to continue to ratchet up complexities, so you think, who is this character, who will push them forward, who will bring out. Then a character is devised to begin as an impediment, shall we say, to somebody else, takes on an entire life, a backstory, the actor comes in, you fall in love with their talent, and then that’s another string that you follow. As Alan and I have said, we have such a murderer’s row of talent in our Japanese cast. And they’re stars in Japan, up and down the way. It’s like having a bunch of thoroughbreds. You are just constantly like wow, I want to see what they can do with this.
Alan Poul: I also think of the ways in which we were able to explore relationships between our characters, between each other, between Jake and our characters and characters that had more one line descriptions in the first season. The differing evolution of Jake’s relationship with Tin Tin and Trendy, his two co-workers, and how they went in completely opposite directions, and maybe opposite directions from the way you would have expected, is something that we, having had the second season, had the luxury to explore. And we had the luxury to take characters who were simple guest performers in season one, like Sato’s brother Kaito, like Mrs. Tozawa and give them more to do, because there was so much attention paid to casting of even the smallest roles. We knew that those people who seem like backbenchers in the first season would be able to carry their own storylines in season two, and we just can extrapolate that onward into future seasons.
Awards Daily: There were two storylines that I thought resonated, at least for me, most strongly: Show’s, in part because we have this Corleone-esque character who’s reluctant to go deeper into the world, but at a certain point he doesn’t have anywhere to go. It’s either up or nothing. And I thought Show did such a wonderful job even in the moments during his ascension with the facial expressions that he gave, the ambivalence. The other was Rinko’s character with the challenge of taking care of her mentally ill brother and trying to have a relationship with a man. Those two characters just deepened so much in the second season in ways that I found very moving.
JT Rogers: With Sato’s character, let’s name the touchdowns. Of course there’s a Corleone-esque feel, but the difference is what I’ve built from the beginning. Show’s ability to dramatize emotional ambivalence is wonderful as an actor. I was interested in this character, and this character I’ve created from whole cloth. He is not in the book. It obviously comes out of the world Jake has shown me, and then researching it in the book, etc., of course. But, I was really interested in a character who was ambivalent. Corleone has the crown that is there for him to take because he is the son of the king. Here we have the opposite. We have this hotspur, right? This is the young upstart who isn’t from royalty, as it were, and is rising simply because he is so good. His ambivalence is his superpower because of the fact that he has one foot in, one foot out, and does see this as his family, but also sees things from outside. We say a 30,000 foot view. So he’s actually smarter and thinks in new ways. So he keeps succeeding upward, despite the fact that again, he’s not sure what he wants. And then of course, he’s forced to seize the crown to save everyone who doesn’t feel ready for it. So that was planned all along. That was very satisfying.
And with Rinko, this goes to the ensemble thing, I had a general sense of what I wanted for her for season two, but after going back and seeing what she did in season one, not just her extraordinary empathy as an actor, but just living in that newspaper world and going, I want to be in the world she lives in when she’s not here. I want to really go into that. Where does that go? That was a winding road to get to that one. Our actor who’s playing her beau ( is so wonderful.
Awards Daily: We can’t get out of here without talking about Ken Watanabe, who I think is such an incredibly soulful presence. Tell me about working with someone like him who Jake described to me as essentially Katagiri.
JT Rogers: He and I had talked about Katagiri, the real one had passed before I got into the weeds of trying to make something of this. So we’d talk about it, and then Ken would talk to Jake about it. And I want to hear what Alan says as director, because he’s been a director multiple times now. But as a writer, producer, Ken is a man of the theater like myself. So he literally comes in word perfect. Literally whatever is in the stage direction, he does, and whenever he has suggestions, they’re brilliant. And usually it’s “would it be okay with you if I just didn’t say this and I just look at the camera?” His mastery of the form, and his joy of being on the set, and the sort of impishness that comes out at points, he’s a wonderful company leader because he’s so revered but he wears his cape lightly and is just a great collaborator. I really can’t say enough good things about him.
Alan Poul: I think that Ken-San set the tone on the set because he is the senior member. He does wear his mantle as a producer, which means he feels he shares a responsibility for making the ship run smoothly, which is not always the case. He was always courteous, always prepared, always on time, and therefore nobody else would dare step out of line. He does that both because it’s his work ethic and also with a sense of consciousness about who he is and what he represents and what he brings. He’s such a thoughtful man as an actor. As a director, you try to always be open to actors’ suggestions and actors always want to try things and they have suggestions about the character and sometimes their instincts are on point and sometimes their instincts are not on point. That’s your job, to get them into the right frame of mind. But I will say one of the remarkable things about Ken-San is that he thinks about himself as Katagiri and the theme and things that he would like to do or things that he feels he doesn’t have to say in order to express, but he also is always very aware of what the meaning of the scene is and what Katagiri needs to impart in order to move the story forward as a whole. It’s never coming from a place of ego as much as from a place of wanting to make this thing work as well as it possibly could, and here’s what I can bring to it. It’s really unusual to be able to collaborate with an actor whose thoughts and suggestions are on target so much of the time.
Awards Daily: Okay, so one last question and it’s a question I’ve been struggling with. In the worst case scenario, if your show were to end with the camera on Katagiri having this laughing moment realizing that he and Jake are so different but yet in some ways so similar, if that is the way the show ends, that’s your last shot. Do you feel good about it? Because it really is lovely as hell.
JT Rogers: Yes. With all the bittersweetness, setting aside the interest and desire to keep going, I wanted to stick the landing. This is months and months and months ago, because living in the TV landscape that Alan and I do, the one motto you can know and you can return to is, you just never know. I asked for two extra episodes in season two just so that arc story that we started, in the very first moment of season one, episode one, could be concluded. So yeah I feel very satisfied about it and I get very emotional watching when I go back and watch.
Alan Poul: Yeah, what he said, but I want to know what happens when Jake comes back from the bathroom. Because in the interim, something has happened.
Awards Daily: Me too. I hope we get to find out.
