Anna Sawai + Marie Claire + Getting Small To Go Large

Saturday, August 22, 2026

From the article:


"She spent years being trained to control herself—to live up to what she calls the stoicism of her family, the rigors of ballet training that she never quite mastered, and Japanese culture itself, where Sawai always felt like she wasn’t doing things the way people wanted her to, no matter how strong her drive was to be a “people pleaser.” But sitting here on this roof, unrehearsed, as Sawai succumbs to the emotions that go off like fireworks at any spark of stimuli, it feels obvious why she’s poised to become a movie star, with forthcoming roles as a grieving heist member in David Leitch’s How to Rob a Bank and Yoko Ono in Sam Mendes’s quartet of Beatles biopics. Maybe the quality filmmakers keep responding to isn’t just how Sawai disappears into a character, but how she has learned to let herself be seen."

I still have yet to see Shogun.

I will.

But please don't Shogun shame me.

I'll get there.