The “behind-the-scenes” story behind the selection of two young actors to play the lead roles in the October season’s “Geki 9” series.
A new mystery created by the “Galileo” series duo
It was recently announced that actors Osamu Suzuka (24) and Hoka Matsumoto (27) will play the lead roles in the Fuji Television series “Lie Unraveling Rhetoric,” a serial drama in the Fuji Television’s Geki 9 slot that will start on October 7.
The drama is based on the manga of the same title by Toshitsu Todo. The story is about a poor, debt-ridden detective (Suzuka) with a keen eye for observation and a detective with the ability to hear through lies (Matsumoto), who solve difficult cases together. Both Suzuka and Matsumoto have been selected for their first lead roles on the Gekijuku series. The two actors, director Hiroshi Nishitani and producer Yoshihiro Suzuki, both of whom worked on the popular “Galileo” series starring Masaharu Fukuyama (55), will team up again to create a new mystery.
The film is set in the early Showa period,” said Suzuki. This will be the first Gekijuku production set in the past since “Nobunaga Concerto,” starring Shun Oguri (41), which was a live-action adaptation of a popular comic book in the October ’14 season. The movie version of “Nobunaga” was released in 2004 and became a hit, grossing 4.61 billion yen at the box office.
Compared to this film, “Lie Unraveling Rhetoric” seems to have a more subdued impression. The Internet has already been full of harsh opinions about the selection of the two young actors, such as, “Young people won’t watch it anyway,” and “Middle-aged and older people don’t know about it, so the ratings are sure to be a flop.
(TV station insiders) “Umi no Hajimari” (The Beginning of the Sea), which is in this season’s Gekkan 9 slot, stars Ren Meguro (27) of the popular group “Snow Man” and has Kasumi Arimura (31), who is also Matsumoto’s senior at the office, as the heroine. This is one of the factors that make Suzuka and Matsumoto stand out as “young” actors. Even so, it is still quite a challenge for these two actors to be selected for the lead roles in a Gekkan 9 series.
Although Suzuka had given good performances in “Roppongi Class” (TV Asahi) in 2010, a remake of a popular Korean drama, and in “silent,” a moving film from the same year in which Meguro also appeared, this is her first starring role in a drama series in the golden prime time slot (7-11 pm).
Matsumoto, on the other hand, starred in “Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni” (TBS), a live-action adaptation of the manga classic in 2006, alongside Momori Matsuzaka (35). He also starred in the movie “Kimi Tsukushi Ryokucho” released in 2008, but his name recognition has yet to reach that level. The Gekkinen series has featured first-time lead actors in five consecutive productions, from Nana Mori and Shotaro Mamiya in last July’s “Cinderella in Midsummer” to Ren Meguro in this season’s “Cinderella in Midsummer,” but this is a major selection among them.
There were various “adult circumstances” involved.
Suzuka is a junior at the office of Alice Hirose (29), who starred in the April season of this year’s Gekkinen series, and Matsumoto is a junior at Arimura’s office. Both were selected for the lead roles thanks to their seniors who have experience in Gekkinen, but there were other “adult circumstances” at play as well.
In the first place, the casting and filming budget for “The Beginning of the Sea” was too much, so they decided to use younger actors as a “desperate measure. In addition, since the film is ostensibly a double feature, the two leads should be “equal,” but in reality, Suzuka is actually the better actor. The reason for this is said to be that Fuji Television wants to cast Suzu Hirose (26) in the future, who is a senior at the office that originally discovered and scouted Ms. Suzuka.
In addition, the same office as Ms. Matsumoto has Ms. Erika Toda (36), who has a track record in Gekkin, Ms. Minami Tanaka (37), who is likely to be cast in Gekkin in the future, and Ms. Riho Yoshioka (31), who just transferred in April of this year, all of whom belong to the same office, with Ms. Arimura at the top. By having Ms. Matsumoto also cast in the lead role, there is a transparent desire to maintain a good relationship with the agency,” said a Fuji insider.
If “Lie Unraveling Rhetoric” becomes a hit with Suzuka and Matsumoto in the lead roles, it is likely to lead to more young talent being selected in the future. ……
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PHOTO： Yusuke Kondo
