It has been revealed that popular group "Hey! Say! JUMP's" Yuto Nakajima will appear in the WOWOW drama series "Gold Sunset" (6 episodes in total), starring actor Uchino Masaaki. This will be Nakajima's first time appearing in a WOWOW drama series.
The original work is the novel of the same name by Yu Shirao (Shogakukan). It is a human drama in which people with emotional scars, including the mysterious old man Isamu Akutsu, played by Uchino, reexamine their lives, and will be broadcast and streamed from February 23, 2025. The poster visual and trailer video have also been released.
Nakajima plays Shunsuke Takenouchi, who works at a real estate company. Takenouchi becomes close with Chikako Ota (Maki Sakai) who is consulting him about purchasing an apartment. He is a friendly and gentle young man who is well liked by Chikako, but in reality he is carrying a wound in his heart that he cannot tell anyone, and he continues to tell kind lies for the sake of those he cares about.
Nakajima commented, "It was the first time I'd played this role. It was very delicate and complex. It was very difficult to capture the subtleties of the character's emotions. I tried to cherish the time and space I spent with Tsukayama Masatane and Imai Takafumi as I performed the role."
He then appealed, "The series features many delicate and complex characters who are emotionally scarred and bound by the shackles of their past. However, there is a faint light of hope in each story, and the characters are shown clumsily moving forward one step at a time. I hope that this will give viewers the courage and strength to live for tomorrow."
The story is as follows: Kotone Uemura (played by Nono Maeda), a middle school girl with a deep emotional wound, hears a strange voice that sounds like a shout. She realizes that it is the voice of an unknown middle-aged man, Isamu Akutsu (played by Uchino), who lives next door. One day, Kotone follows Akutsu when he goes out and finds him in the park. She learns the reason for the strange voice and becomes interested in him, which leads to her encounter with a community theater company called "Taurus Theater".
The story features a theater company's director, Komakizawa Riko (Kobayashi Satomi), a young man who pretends to be an old man's grandson, Takenouchi Shunsuke (Nakajima), a single woman who was suddenly laid off, Ota Chikako (Sakai Maki), a woman who is traumatized by an incident at her former workplace, and Ota Norie (Fubuki Jun), an elderly woman who makes a big decision. Through her encounters with people with their own troubles, Kotone realizes something important and is forced to face her own problems. Eventually, the existence of Setsuko (Miura Toko), the woman Akutsu has been searching for, and the past she has been hiding are revealed... and so the story unfolds.
"Serial Drama W Gold Sunset" will be broadcast and streamed on WOWOW Prime and WOWOW On Demand every Sunday at 10 p.m. starting February 23, 2025.
