Anna Sawai made a splash in her debut appearance at the Emmys.
As a first-time nominee—for her star performance in FX’s Shōgun—Sawai dazzled with her look for the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, held tonight at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
She embraced the drop-waist trend with her red-carpet look: a sizzling red-hot strapless dress by Vera Wang featuring a pointed neckline and a tiered trumpet skirt. She accessorized the look sparingly, simply adding a pair of radiant diamond and sapphire drop earrings from Cartier.
Sawai’s first-ever Emmy nomination is for her performance as Mariko in FX’s historical drama Shōgun, adapted from the 1975 James Clavell novel of the same name. Shōgun is the most-nominated series at this year’s ceremony, leading the pack with a total of 25 nods, including highly coveted categories like Best Drama Series, Best Actor, and Best Actress.
In an April 2024 interview with Esquire, Sawai opened up about getting to see a character like Mariko onscreen as a Japanese woman.
“I love that we get to see all the struggles of the women. Oftentimes, it’s the men that are going to war and the men that have the power,” she said. “Especially as a Japanese woman, I didn’t see our strength being portrayed in Western media. But in [Shōgun], we really get to see them execute their strength in a completely different way. It’s so quiet and subtle, but they have so much power. I liked that we get to see the different outlets of Mariko’s power.”
She added, “In the naginata scene, it’s obviously a physical strength that she is showing. But in the scene where she’s confronting Ishido, it’s very outspoken. The real strength is within her—and it’s within the actions that she takes. It’s not loud. The most powerful people are the people that don’t really show it.”
