It has been revealed that the popular young comedy duo "Evers" will star in the TV Asahi drama series "Natsu no Manzai" (Saturdays at 12:30 AM), which starts on July 4th. This will be Evers' first time starring in a drama.
"Natsu no Manzai" is a drama series that predates "Yoru no Manzai," which aired last December. "Yoru no Manzai" was produced with the concept of "what if the Sunday conversation between two strangers who happened to be together was as funny as a stand-up comedy routine," set on Christmas Eve, and featured Evers and others, generating a lot of buzz.
This year's "Natsu no Manzai" shifts the setting from Christmas Eve to "a certain summer day," where popular manzai comedians become inhabitants of a "world where they didn't become comedians," performing "conversational manzai" amidst casual everyday conversations—a completely new form of ensemble conversational drama. It promises to offer a sense of realism, as if you were "eavesdropping on the funny stories of the people next door."
Furthermore, last year's M-1 champion, Takuro, also appears in the first episode, resulting in a collaboration between Evers and other M-1 finalists.
◇Story
One holiday in July, Sasaki (Takashi Sasaki, also known as Evers) is suddenly asked to look after his relative's young son for a day. Not used to being around children, Sasaki calls his friend Machida (Kazuki Machida, also known as Evers) and the three of them head to an amusement park. The two adults try their best to entertain the boy, but everything they do backfires. Then, in the blink of an eye, the boy disappears...
◇Takashi Sasaki (as Sasaki)
This is my first leading role in a drama, so I feel like our acting skills have finally been recognized. To avoid being too nervous and to be natural, I watched various actors' works, especially "Shaolin Soccer," and incorporated their ideas into my own acting style before filming.
In the drama, I perform some old jokes, but since they're originally in a casual conversational style, it was easy to do. Takahashi Yoshifumi, who played the young boy, is about the same age as my nephew and is very cute, so I think we had a fun time filming. I thought he might be nervous about appearing in a drama with Evers, so I tried to ease his tension by talking to him.
◇Kazuki Machida (as Machida)
My partner says that "they were evaluated on their acting skills," but I think they were chosen because they were evaluated on their stand-up comedy, not their acting skills. Also, "Shaolin Soccer" is not a work to learn acting from.
On set, I had a friendly chat with Yoshifumi Takahashi, who plays the boy, and there's a very good chance that he learned about Evers for the first time today and had looked him up on Wikipedia beforehand.
