Ken Watanabethe Oscar-nominated actor who is a star of the HBO/Max drama series that created Emmy buzz Tokyo Vice — he plays Hiroto Katagiri, a detective in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s organized crime division and father figure to Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort), an American journalist in Tokyo – is an Emmy nominee as lead actor, as is Elgort, contrary to widespread reports that he would be pushed as a supporting actor, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Tokyo Vice is currently in awards discussion for its second season, which was even better received (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) than its first (released in April 2022, it’s at 85%), and was the most successful Max original watched on the platform since its fall. The competition takes place during a year in which the Emmys’ drama categories are being whittled down to an almost unprecedented degree, with only one former drama series nominee eligible for recognition (the Netflix film The crown) – and it seems as ready to capitalize on that opening as any drama series. Indeed, beyond good reviews and ratings, this season it attracted one of the largest audiences of any show at its official FYC event for TV Academy members on April 3 at the Avalon in Hollywood .
For the first season of the series – the first big-budget American television series filmed entirely in Japan, gaining access to cinemas in parts of Tokyo that no foreign production had ever had before – Watanabe was cast in the support category. But he made bigger, more memorable contributions in the second season (which lasted 10 episodes compared to season 1’s eight), which probably explains the category change.
The creator of the show JT Rogers has stated since the beginning of the series that he saw season 1 as setting the table and season 2 as turning the table. Indeed, in season 2, the dark forces within the yakuza stop honoring the unspoken rules that dictate how the underworld operates and we see the repercussions. Katagiri had previously attempted to maintain an uneasy peace between the various yakuza factions, but the arrival of detective Shoko Negate (Miki Maya) announces a new aggressive stance by the police to end the yakuza’s hold on the city. The question of the season is: Can the supposedly incorruptible Katagiri stay clean under enormous pressure and threats to his family from the yakuza?
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Watanabe was entering the endorsement race.
