Production Designers Behind ‘The Sympathizer,’ ‘Shogun’ and More Discuss Creating the Look of Sprawling Asian Cities

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor FX’s “Shogun” had planned to shoot in Japan; due to the pandemic, the production shifted to Vancouver. Production designer Helen Jarvis had never been to Japan, nor had she read James Clavell’s original novel that the series is based on. Nonetheless, she was determined to bring authenticity to the locations when building the world of feudal Japan in the 1600s.

FX’s drama series required Jarvis to transform two exterior backlots and two soundstages, building everything from a fishing village to a harbor to royal palaces. Speaking with Variety, Jarvis says, “At the time, Osaka was a significantly large city. It’s a very convoluted coastline.

If you look at a contemporary view, it’s mostly built up with concrete with many inlets and there wasn’t one huge harbor.” The old mill was a cedar factory with a man-made inlet; it became the perfect setting to build the port and fishing harbor. Jarvis and her team built jetties and buildings that wrapped around the water. Those buildings were what Jarvis describes as humble.

“With the city of Osaka, we would graduate from those buildings owned by the fishermen who lived right at the end of the water. The buildings would grow, and as you approach the castle, the houses would get larger and more prestigious,” Jarvis says. “Shogun” isn’t the only recent show where production designers had to tackle transforming unlikely locations into Asian cities.

It’s a commonality that binds several titles vying for Emmy consideration this season, including HBO’s “The Sympathizer” and Fox’s “The Cleaning Lady.” “The Sympathizer” follows a captain, played by Hoa Xuande, in the South Vietnamese army who’s secretly spying for the North Vietnamese communists. Originally, the production was set to take place in Vietnam which would have provided an authentic landscape; due to censorship issues, filming moved to Thailand. Production designers Donald Graham Burt and Alec Hammond worked on the series.

“One of the challenges of Thailand is the architecture,” Hammond says. Thailand had never been colonized by a Western power as opposed to Vietnam, which had gone back and forth between the French and the Americans. “You