Looking at the response they received for “Blue Eye Samurai”, Michael Green And Amber Noizumi see a recurring compliment that really pleases them. “One of the best compliments we’ve gotten is that people keep asking us where we got the rights to the books and we have to remind them that there were no books. We just thought of it. It was an idea that Amber and I had been thinking about for a very long time,” Green Gold Derby reveals during our recent webchat (Watch the exclusive video interview above). The idea actually came about when the couple had their daughter, who they named Blue Eye Samurai after the facial features she had because she was of mixed race. “We thought about the idea for a long time and weren’t sure what to do with it until finally the idea of doing it in an adult cartoon came up, and we were lucky that the streaming services were just willing to experiment with it.”
Blue Eye Samurai is an adult animated series that aired on Netflix. Set during the Edo period in Japan in the 17th century, it centers on Mizu, a female samurai who is half white and half Japanese. Mizu seeks revenge on four white men, including her father, who have been staying in Japan illegally after the country closed its borders to outsiders. The series’ voice actors are Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Darren Barnet, George Takei, Randall Park, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa And Kenneth Branagh.
The program received two Emmy nominations this year: Best Animated Program and Sound Editing for a Half-Hour Comedy/Drama Program. It is Noizumi’s first Emmy nomination and Green’s second, after being nominated for Best Drama Series in 2007 as a producer of “Heroes.” Green has also worked as a screenwriter for film and television, and has been involved in such films as “American Gods,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017), “Death on the Nile” and “Logan,” for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2017.
When it came to casting the series, Noizumi emphasizes that they were able to turn a pretty big setback into something positive for their project. “The search ended up being pretty great because there was this thing called COVID and nobody could work because all the shows were canceled, so everyone we asked said yes.” She was especially happy to cast Erskine as Mizu, as she and Green were huge fans of “Pen15.” “We know she’s extremely funny, but we don’t know how she would play this kind of lonely cowboy character, a very gruff character. But you could see the pain underlying the humor, and now the world has seen what Maya can do. Actually, she deserves all the Emmys.”
PREDICTIONS the 2024 Emmy winners until September 15
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