Ayumu Nakajima co-stars alongside Kusakawa Takuya in TV Tokyo's "Drama 25: We Are the Bad Barbers" (Friday midnight 12:42am), which began airing on January Getsuku . This is his first lead role in a drama series, and he plays Higurashi Ayumu, a powerless but compassionate former hairdresser with no savings and no place to live. Nakajima, who last year gave impressive performances in NHK's Asadora drama "Anpan" and Fuji TV's Thursday drama "School of love.," shared his thoughts on "sumo wrestling on the ring of television."
◇As the lead actor
The drama is a "barber action comedy" directed by Sakamoto Yugo, director of the "Baby Warukyure" series. The story is set in Tsukishiro Barber Shop, a retro barbershop tucked away in a rural town. At first glance, it appears to be an ordinary barbershop, but the owner, Tsukishiro Tsukasa (Kusakawa), has a hidden side. Tsukishiro is a behind-the-scenes barber who uses force to solve problems that customers bring to him that cannot be solved in the real world. His job is to straighten out his clients' messy lives and cut their hair for 3 million yen. Higurashi (Nakajima), who ends up working as a live-in barber at Tsukishiro Barber Shop by chance, takes on a variety of requests despite his clumsiness...
Nakajima says Higurashi is a "pleasant person." He says, "He speaks out for justice (what is right) in a loud voice, so I hope the viewers will also feel good about it."
"This time, the villain is easy to understand, but I think there's also a certain satisfaction in saying the right thing as if it were obvious. With Batman and Spider-Man, the 'heroes' of recent movies have always been troubled, so I'm curious to see how people will react to a character like this."
Nakajima, who said he was "allowed to play the role freely," said that his "relaxed appearance" is "a point that he wants viewers to see and feel."
"When I watch TV, comedians on the stage or commentators on variety shows can sometimes seem a bit cramped, so I hope I can convey that there are people like me who are living life to the fullest."
As the lead actor, he decided to "put aside whether I could do it or not, and just keep on conveying my thoughts and ideas."
"I wanted to really value ideas like, 'I want to cover myself with cardboard here,' or 'What if the surroundings shake with anger here?' A script is born on a table, but on set it's a place where many different people bring their own ideas and create something three-dimensional, so I wanted to make full use of those things. I think that's the best part of making a film, and once I let go of my reservations, everyone started coming up with ideas, and I really gained a lot from that."
◇Is TV still scary?
Nakajima, who expressed a sense of fulfillment about his leading role, saying, "Because I'm always on screen, I can expand on the character and have the chance to try out all kinds of things," looked back on 2025, a year in which he continued to be active in TV dramas such as "Anpan" and "School of love.."
"I have the impression that a lot more people are recognizing me now, and it feels like I've 'wrestled on the ring of television.' Also, in the Asadora(' Anpan'), it's been a while since I played such a nice guy, so it was a learning experience for me. I put a lot of thought into developing my relationship with the main character in a very short scene, so I think the results were quite good. Also, it seems like a lot of people watch Asadora."
Regarding Asadora, Nakajima previously said about her appearance in "Hanako to Anne" in the first half of 2014, "I received very bad reviews (about my acting), and that has left me traumatized."
"I definitely feel that television has a bigger influence than movies or theater (stage), and I'm still afraid of being disliked, so I'm still afraid of things that scare me. But on the other hand, I'm happy to be known, so that's why I think acting itself is so important. I hope to become famous and have people see the works I appear in and get to know them, so I appeared on TV quite a bit last year and experienced both the good and the bad sides of that, the good and the scary parts."
Looking ahead, he says, "I would like to star in various productions, play big roles, and perform on big stages."
"Of course I want to be recognized, and I also want to bring as much healing as possible to the people who watch the works and roles I appear in. That's because art has done that for me up until now, and although there are many terrible things happening in the world, I want to make people feel even a little lighter when they are watching my work and after they have seen it."
