You have seen our next guests on the big screen, and they are acting royalty in Japan, now headlining an ambitious new American TV series based on the celebrated novel Shogun by James Clevel, following two ambitious men and a female Samurai at the dawn of a civil war. Take a look.

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Joining us now, our actor and producer, Hiroyuki Sanada and actor, Anna Sawai. Thank you both for joining us. Really appreciate it. This first question is for both of you. You've appeared in American projects, big projects, Wolverine, John Wick 4, Fast and Furious. I'm wondering, and I'm guessing this project took on some added importance and meaning because it's an American project, but it's also alongside other Japanese and international actors.

Yes, I think this is a great opportunity to introduce our culture to the world. So as a producer, I wanted to make this show authentic as much as possible. And we've done our best on set.

And Anna, you as well?

Yes, of course. To add to what he said, for me, it was really important to have a Japanese figure that felt real to me, that feels real to the Japanese audience, because a lot of the Japanese female characters that I've seen in the past have been, simply good at fighting or simply just quiet and cute. Or someone who... What else was I saying before? They just seemed a little... Like they didn't have that depth.

Still, typically.

You wanted depth.

Yes, or stereotypically sexy. I wanted to show I wanted to have the Japanese female audience be able to see my character and say, I see myself. I see the vulnerability, what she's been through, the weight that she carries, but the strength in the core. I saw that in Mariko and definitely wanted to tell her story.

Hiro, you took on two roles, producing and acting, and you were talking about having everything just right. You say, being specific to quote the Japanese way, What does that mean exactly?

Everything, even props, wig, costume, is a very important part of our culture. I wanted to introduce to the world correctly. That's very important for us. And yeah, luckily, we could hire the Japanese crew from Japan who has an experience for the Samurai drama making. So every department has a consultant. And yeah, that helped a lot.

Annie, you play an upper class woman who's a female warrior. I'm assuming that was not common back in this time period?

Well, the important thing for me was that if she was going to fight, that it had to make sense. That is one of the questions that I asked, if women of her class actually fought with Naginata, and that was a thing, women of her class would get training so that they could fight in case there was an ambush, and they would also hold a little sword called a kiken in their chest. And so once I found out that that was historically true, it was easy for me to just do it because why not show what actually happened in our history?

The first weapon you mentioned gave women more reach, right?

Yes, exactly. It's longer than my height.

Absolutely. Here, this is an iconic book that's been updated, adapted rather before people are so familiar with it. I'm wondering, were you familiar with it when the project came to you?

Yeah, I watched the original one on time, but I never I read the novel before until I received the offer. So this time I reexamined the novel, and then I respect the novel. So following novel, we created the original way of script. So I followed our new version of script more than real history.

All right. And just quickly, lastly, what do you want people to take from this series?

I hope that they really enjoy the human drama because it's so based on what feels right. I hope that they learn more about our culture, our history, our people, and I hope that it opens more doors for authentic Japanese storytelling. All right.

Well, I'm sure it will. Thank you both so much for being here. We really appreciate it. It was nice to meet you in the first two episodes of FX's Shogun premiere February 27th on Hulu.

Hi, everyone. George Stefanopoulos here. Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel. If you'd like to get more videos, show highlights, and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel. And don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts. Thanks for watching.