“I don’t even know how many people there are in the world,” muses Cosmo Jarvis, when I tell him about the viewing figures for the first episode of his new television series, Shōgun. Some context then: there are around eight billion people on Earth, and the premiere of the historical epic clocked nine million views, meaning it was more popular in its first week than Disney+ stablemates The Kardashians and The Bear. And even if, as the 34-year-old actor points out, “everything seems to be in the millions these days with views,” Shōgun has cut through. Your friends are likely watching it, your colleagues too. You might have overheard people in the queue for coffee discuss the latest episode. Does it feel like a game changer? “Perhaps,” he says, in a typically thoughtful manner, “it will lead to the acquisition of further employment.”
In FX’s 10-part series, Jarvis plays John Blackthorne, an English sailor who lands on Japanese shores and is immediately embroiled in a power struggle against Lord Toranaga (played by Hiroyuki Sanada). Anyone familiar with Jarvis’s work won’t be surprised to learn he is a highlight among the cast: the 34-year-old British actor blusters through the political machinations with a roguish charm, his eyes permanently wild. I cannot see it today, because his video is turned off during our call, but the actor has the kind of face that is both compelling and inscrutable: you want to see him on screen just to figure out what his character is thinking.
Jarvis was born in New Jersey to an Armenian-American mother and English father. He moved to Devon when he was a child, and initially pursued a career in music. You can, and should, listen to the lead track off his second album, which is titled “Gay Pirates” for a sense of Jarvis’s unconventional songwriting. But acting soon took over. First as Florence Pugh’s tortured love interest in 2016’s Lady Macbeth. Following roles, like an ex-boxer in Irish drama Calm With Horses alongside Barry Keoghan, solidified his credentials. In Netflix’s Persuasion adaptation, he provided the requisite gruffness to play Captain Wentworth (and conveyed enough offbeat appeal to make the performance memorable amid the silliness).
Shōgun, which was filmed in Vancouver, was a different beast altogether. “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done at that point,” he says of the 11-month shoot. “My only purpose of being there was to portray this man, and when I’m in the middle of a task, I find it quite difficult to do anything else until it’s done.”
The series is based on the James Clavell’s bestselling book of the same name from 1975, which Jarvis started reading a few weeks into the casting process, and used it “as kind of a Bible” throughout production. Often he did not read ahead of the scenes the actors were filming, so information became relevant to Jarvis as it did to Blackthorne. He avoided the first television adaptation from 1980, in which Richard Chamberlain played the Blackthorne role: “I just didn’t think it would be useful.” Was it helpful for Jarvis to be away from home in England and on foreign territory for long periods of time? “Definitely,” he says. “There is that sense of when you wash up in a strange land, and there’s no way back, you are faced with an acceptance of that situation.”
That set a theme for Jarvis’s preparation, which sounds as immersive as the show. “My father used to be a merchant seaman, so I was able to ask him a lot of questions about Blackthorne’s occupation,” he tells me. Like, what was a pilot’s role? Or, and perhaps this was a little more complicated, how does celestial navigation work? Jarvis went deep on the history too: he wanted to know what London was like at the time, how the public perceived Queen Elizabeth I, about Japanese history and cannons and old ships. If that all sounds a bit academic, you’ll be glad to know that Jarvis also brings much-needed humour to the role. In the first episode, after he is pissed on and deluged with fish guts, Blackthorne is taken in by local villagers, only to wake up and punch a hole through the house’s paper wall. “The levity or humour happened because of the ridiculousness of the situation,” he says. “This fairly average Joe being embroiled in this grand turn of events in this land he knows next to nothing about.”
One of the most intriguing aspects of the drama for a viewer, and I imagine an actor, is that much of the dialogue is in Japanese. Jarvis does not speak the language. He only recently visited the country for the press tour (“a magical place, very clean,” he notes). When you hear English on the show, the characters are likely speaking Portuguese (at the time Portugal controlled Japan’s trade with the West, and this is a major plot point in the series). That was helpful, Jarvis explains, because Blackthorne would not have understood the conversation either. In many scenes, the Englishman interacts with Japanese characters, and while there may be a translator (in the form of bilingual character Lady Mariko, played by Anna Sawai), he often has to work out what’s going on through body language. “The intention of what is said has a way of clearly being conveyed through the tone of voice and the person’s facial expression,” the actor explains. “It totally transcends any kind of language barrier.” By the end of filming, Jarvis, like Blackthorne, had picked up some Japanese: that evolution gives the performance a intimate, lived-in feel – rare in a historical epic.
Throughout our conversation, Jarvis is self-deprecating and studiously deferential, lightning-quick to praise the cast and crew and more hesitant to talk about himself. Not unusual for an actor, but I sense that Jarvis is determined to stay close to the ground, even as his career skyrockets (up next, he stars alongside Robert De Niro in gangster drama Alto Knights). It is all the more intriguing then when an offhand story reveals something about his refreshingly distinctive approach. When I ask if he had to learn any combat skills – his character is always one smart-ass answer away from a fight – Jarvis says no. Blackthorne is not supposed to be a competent fighter, he explains. “If he does make it through a fight, it’s probably on luck and gumption, and I’m fairly used to getting battered around.” This makes it sound as though Jarvis is part of a fight club. “Sometimes it’s easier to just do it,” he says simply. “Because it holds up the show if you’re putting on too many pads. If somebody needs to kick an actor, then, personally for me, I find it easier to just tell the other actor, ‘Just kick me.’”
‘Shōgun’ is available on Disney+, new episodes are released weekly
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
