Néstor Carbonell grew facial hair, gained 25 pounds, learned how to appropriately bow and, yes, even learned how to row a boat for the FX limited series Shogun, which scored a leading 25 Emmy nominations, including one for Carbonell as guest actor.

Carbonell portrays Rodrigues, a Spanish pilot tasked with bringing Blackthorne (played by Cosmo Jarvis) to Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada).

The actor likens Rodrigues to Iago in Othello as “sort of a Machiavellian character, someone who knows how to play people. He knows the chess game.”

Here, Carbonell walks THR through the preparation that led to his first Emmy nom.

Congratulations on your first Emmy nomination. What does this recognition mean to you for this show in particular?

That’s a great question because this character means so much to me. Being part of this amazing show, the whole experience was extraordinary, from the beginning all the way to the end. It’s not often as an actor that you get to play someone who’s quite far away from you in so many respects; physically, I had the opportunity to grow this nasty beard and gain some weight, and then learning a Castilian accent. Usually, when I work on a project, I end up hiring my own dialect coach because it’s not factored into the budget, but it was on Shogun. They truly spared no expense in terms of every detail. I got to work with a phenomenal coach and learn some Japanese as well.

How did you become attached to the project?

I was completely surprised, because I think it was the summer, and I was directing a TV show, New Amsterdam, in New York. I get a call from my agent and he says, “A script is coming your way, and the writer, Justin Marks, and the director of the pilot, Jonathan van Tulleken, want to meet with you and discuss.” So I was cramming as a director and also trying to read it. I vaguely remembered the miniseries [from 1980]. I was a kid back then, but I remember being so impressed at the time. I thought, “That’s incredible that they’re doing this.” So I met with them, and I Zoomed with them, I read the script and I had no idea how they were going to pull this off, because it was massive in scope. … As soon as it was all set that I was playing the part, I was like, “Well, I’m not shaving, that’s for starters.”

The show has been lauded for its authenticity to the Japanese culture and that era. What was your particular research process like?

I was able to avail myself of all these extraordinary, actual historians that were flown in from Japan and experts that were flown in for every discipline. We had experts in martial arts, in sword fighting, in Japanese customs. I learned how to properly bow, who to bow to, when to make eye contact, when not to make eye contact, knowing full well that I was going to break all those rules, because my character pretty much insults everyone. He comes in, he knows he pushes every boundary because he thinks he can. And I imagine he gets away with it. He knows his currency, his value within the culture, but I still had to learn the rules so I could learn how to break them. I didn’t get to sword fight [in the show], but I was like, “You better believe I’m going to take that lesson if they’re offering it!”

And you gained 25 pounds?

I did. That was hard. And taking it off for The Morning Show was not as easy. … It was a lot of fun walking around with this beard. Oh, this is a funny story: I shot those first two episodes of Shogun, and then I did a panel with The Morning Show. And I walked in, I had this beard. And it took everyone a minute to know who I was.