When the “Shogun” writer and producer Justin Marks stormed the Emmys stage after his show won best drama on Sunday night, his first order of business was to pay tribute to the people who helped bring him there: the executive team at FX.
How, he wondered aloud, did the network approve a show that was extremely expensive, and would be mostly subtitled in Japanese?
“I have no idea why you did that, but thank you for your faith in this incredible team,” he said.
For roughly two decades, that team at FX has been a darling to television critics with series like “American Horror Story,” “The Americans,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Atlanta.” But the network, with less money at its disposal than rivals such as Netflix and HBO, had never won television’s most prestigious prize, best drama, until Sunday.
And that’s not all it won.
“Shogun,” an adaptation from a 1975 best-selling book centered on 17th century feudal Japan on the brink of civil war, had a dominant night at the Emmys. It set a record for most Emmys won by a show in a single year, winning 18 in all. It was also the first time a foreign language show (roughly 70 percent of the show was in Japanese) had taken the best drama award that is normally the domain of shows that take place in the United States, the United Kingdom or Westeros.
Another FX show, “The Bear,” won several major Emmys on Sunday night, including three acting awards. But in an upset, Max’s “Hacks” defeated “The Bear” in best comedy series.
Still, the wins at the Emmys were a triumph for The Walt Disney Company, which purchased FX as part of a 2019 deal with the Murdoch family that included the sale of most of Fox’s entertainment properties. Disney needs FX to succeed to complement its enormous library of children’s programming and help fuel the Disney+ and Hulu streaming apps to better compete with Netflix and YouTube.
This week was a very good one for Disney, which won a jaw-dropping 60 Emmys, more than any other company. FX was responsible for more than half of that total, 36 in all, easily surpassing perennial Emmy heavyweights like HBO and Netflix for the first time.
Speaking from the red carpet before the ceremony, Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, said he was initially skeptical of “Shogun,” given its big budget and those pesky subtitles. But FX executives persuaded him that it would work.
“I just love the guts,” Mr. Iger said, beaming.
The man most responsible for that, John Landgraf, the chairman of FX, has overseen programming choices at the network for two decades. Mr. Landgraf is also the person who coined “Peak TV,” a term that defined an entire heady era of entertainment.
But despite the network’s strong track record, FX has long been something of an underdog.
The network’s rivals continue to spend more, but FX’s executive team has been steadfastly loyal to Mr. Landgraf, and their stable of skilled writers and producers. (FX broadcasts a show in partnership with The New York Times.)
“When we first went there, we went into a room with John and his team and he said: ‘This is us. We are the small team you will be talking to every day,’” said Brad Simpson, a producer behind “American Crime Story” and the forthcoming adaptation of “Say Nothing.”
“Twelve years later, it is still the same core group,” Mr. Simpson said.
Gina Balian had been thinking about a “Shogun” television series ever since she joined in the network in 2012. Ms. Balian, now a president of FX Entertainment who had been at HBO previously and played a significant role in programming “Game of Thrones,” thought the 1975 book had the elements to make a successful mini-series — and one that was different from the successful 1980 adaptation for NBC.
“It reminded me of some of the best parts of ‘Thrones’ in terms of the scope and scale, and I was very captivated by this idea of what it means to be foreign, and foreign to each other,” she said.
Still, it would require enormous patience. Years passed, and Ms. Balian and FX cycled through writers and producers.
“It just wasn’t coming together,” she said. “At that point, everyone was tired. But there was always something there, something in that book that compelled me to keep going.”
By the time Ms. Balian met with Mr. Marks, and another executive producer, Rachel Kondo, things began to click. Their story would focus less on the white protagonist of the 1980 NBC adaptation, and direct more of a focus on the Japanese perspective. That would require the show to be mostly Japanese, but it was worth the risk, she said.
“How are you going to find the kind of talent you need and say you want to be authentic and ask them all to speak English when that’s not their first language?” she said. “You can’t reconcile that.”
The people they found, the Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, won best actor and best actress in a drama series on Sunday night.
Before the Emmys, executives hoped “The Bear” would win the night’s other top prize, for best comedy show. But the show appeared to hit some headwinds in recent weeks.
“The Bear” probably suffered from its recently released third season that was met with a much cooler reception from viewers and critics. And there was an overwhelming industry debate in recent months if it should even be eligible in the comedy categories. The topic even made part of the opening monologue of the Emmys show on Sunday.
“In the true spirit of ‘The Bear,’ we will not be making any jokes,” Eugene Levy, one of the Emmy hosts, said.
Still, it won several awards this go-round, including three acting awards on Sunday night, and set a record for wins by a comedy series in a single year.
That was another show patiently shepherded by FX executives. Several years ago, Chris Storer, a respected comedy producer and director, found himself on the phone with Kate Lambert, a longtime FX executive. She had a simple question for him: Why do TV shows that take place in a restaurant usually stink? It took Mr. Storer, the creator of “The Bear,” aback.
“It was the smartest question,” he said in a podcast interview in 2022. “As a group, they know the right questions to ask you.”
It forced him to ask people he knew in the restaurant industry the same question. “Sort of uniformly, the answer was no one focuses on how hard it is, and the anxiety and the pain and the loss of time in it,” he said.
The early scripts were unusually intense and it was not a traditional comedy by any means. But the FX team loved it for that reason.
“John does an amazing job of creating an environment where the risk-taking is encouraged,” said Nick Grad, a president at FX Entertainment, and a 22-year veteran of the network. “It’s a scary time in the business right now where there are fewer and fewer consequences to saying no to things.
“That’s not good for the business,” he continued. “It’s easy not to take chances. We feel the opposite. We should be nervous. We should be scared. That’s how you know you’re doing it right. It’s in our DNA.”
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