Saturday, January 06, 2018

Production press conference of Kansai TV Winter 2018 drama "FINAL CUT"


The production press conference of Kansai TV Winter 2018 drama "FINAL CUT" was held in Tokyo on 6 January 2018 which was attended by cast members Kamenashi Kazuya, Fujiki Naohito, Kuriyama Chiaki, Hashimoto Kanna, Hayashi Kento, Takagi Yuuya, Yatsui Ichirou, Mizuno Miki and Sugimoto Tetta. The drama begins its run from 9 January in the Tuesdays 9pm timeslot.

In the original story written by Kaneko Arisa, Kamenashi plays the lead character Nakamura Keisuke whose mother was treated as the murderer of a young girl when he was still in senior high school 12 years ago. In order to prove his mother's innocence and seek revenge for her, he uses various techniques to gather footage of his targets and confronts them with the "final cut" i.e. a clip of the edited footage with his signature line "kore ga anata no finaru katto desu" (this is your final cut).

Kamenashi who is part of the group KAT-TUN which went into a temporary hiatus since 2016, had announced its return on New Year's Eve and the group will also be singing the theme song "Ask yourself" for this drama. He expressed his joy to be able to restart KAT-TUN's music activities and act in this drama with his wonderful co-stars in this new year. Meanwhile, Fujiki who has worked with the scriptwriter Kaneko for a long time, said that he was grateful for her giving him the challenge of playing a newscaster for the first time because she felt that this would open up new opportunities for him besides being an actor. As such, he joked that he hoped that someone would take notice of him and give him a chance one day.

In line with the drama's content, the cast were asked if there was a different side to their co-stars which they would like to convey through the media. Kamenashi said that although Hashimoto has a very cute appearance, she actually is quite straightforward. Reflecting on their first day out on location shooting, the cast had to change their clothes in the bus so Kamenashi offered to let Hashimoto go first. However, Hashimoto was shocked to hear Kamenashi calling her an ojisan (uncle). Kamenashi then explained that Hashimoto behaves like a middle-aged man as she would talk about baseball, sauna and drinking snacks and is such an expert because she could talk about upcoming players who many people hardly know.

Yatsui then followed up by saying that he wanted to apologise to Kamenashi once when the filming dragged on longer than expected but the latter said that it was nothing much since waiting is part of an actor's job. Takagi also chipped in to say that he was worried about speaking casually to his senior Kamenashi in the drama as their characters are supposed to be childhood friends so Kamenashi tried to put him at ease by suggesting that they go for a meal together on their own. Mizuno then revealed how Kamenashi was humming "Jingle Bells" on their filming on Christmas Day while Sugimoto said that Kamenashi was so excited about meeting him for the first time since they last worked together a year ago and greeted him so enthusiastically even though they were supposed to be doing a very emotional scene on that day.

As for his injury sustained during an action scene, Kamenashi said that he's at the age when he has to consider the risks in many things. If he was much younger, he would have went ahead with the action scenes without too much concerns but he tends to think and reconsider things more these days so he hopes to overcome his reservations in the new year while maintaining a balance between being safe and aggressive.

Sources: Crank In / Oricon / Nikkansports / Natalie

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