How ‘Tokyo Vice’ production designer Kikuo Ohta created Season 2’s new sets without completed scripts [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Tokyo Vice” is one of the most immersive shows on television. Shot on location in the Japanese capital, the Max series shows off pockets of the city seldom seen in typical American shows and films. But just as vital to feel of the series are the lived-in sets. Season 2 introduced several new locations, but production designer Kikuo Ohta didn’t have all the information from creator J.T. Rogers and executive producer and director Alan Poul.
“I knew the brief storyline of what happens each episode in Season 2, but not a completed story,” Ohta tells Gold Derby via his interpreter Eriko Yamaguchi (watch the exclusive video interview above). “Of course, the scripts were not ready for me to read through Episodes 1 to 10. When I talked to J.T. and Alan, they told me what will happen in, let’s say, the yakuza offices or the Club Polina, and what happens later on in the story.”
That was particularly important for Club Polina, the new club that Samantha (Rachel Keller) opens. The fifth episode ends with a dramatic shootout in the club. “I came up with the idea of the set, so I had to think, for the scene, how the actors would move. So I had to think where to put the sofa or how to arrange the tables in the Club Polina, knowing that there will be a gunfight later on,” Ohta continues. “But I didn’t have the whole script yet, so I had to talk to J.T. and Alan about what they want and what I can do.”
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Ohta’s favorite new set to design for the second season was far less glamorous and much smaller location: the police office bathroom where Katagiri (Ken Watanabe) and Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida) face each other. “The reason why I liked it the most is because that storyline — Katagiri … had to freshen up a little bit, so he goes to the bathroom to wash his face. Then Tozawa shows up and that’s a big thing in a small tiny room to see them together. I thought, ‘This is a great script [for them] to encounter each other in the bathroom. How great is that?'”
There was early discussion about shooting on location in a real bathroom, but that idea was scrapped because of the show’s late ’90s setting. “The bathroom had to be older than the ’90s, so we talked a lot, and I wanted for when Katagiri was washing his face and then Tozawa shows up for the actors’
position,” Ohta explains. “So we should have the faucet here and the mirror here, and all the details I had to go through, and we created the set in Toho Studios. It was a small scene in a small set, but it’s my favorite set.”The Season 2 finale provides a lot of closure to every storyline, but Ohta is definitely not opposed to a third season if there is a new story to be told. “Of course, if there’s Season 3, I would do it, but … the story completed nicely. If there is a new challenge for Season 3, I would like to do that.”
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