Actress Yumena Yanai recently attended a press conference in Tokyo for the upcoming drama series "Drama Premier 23 'I Thought I Killed My Husband'" (TV Tokyo, Mondays at 11:06 PM), which starts on July 6th. Yanai, who plays the mistress of the protagonist's husband, spoke about the filming process, which includes many physically demanding scenes.
The original work is a popular vertical-scrolling manga of the same name by Mana Akaishi, which was the first joint production between DMM Group's digital comic publisher "CLLENN" and TV Tokyo. The story is a "time-leap revenge suspense" in which the protagonist, Rino (Rio Uchida), repeats her revenge against her cheating husband and his mistress no matter how many times she dies.
Rino, a skilled cook, was living happily with her perfect and kind husband, Keita (Keisuke Watanabe). However, on the night of their wedding anniversary, Rino receives a live video of a mysterious couple. In it, she sees her husband, wearing a mask, entangled with an unknown woman... Discovering the betrayal, Rino goes to kill her husband with a knife, but is killed in retaliation by his mistress, Elena (Yanai)... and the story unfolds from there.
Elena, played by Yanai, is Keita's mistress. She usually works as a cleaner, but every Friday she and Keita do a live broadcast on an adult streaming site...that's the character she plays. Yanai says, "There are a lot of provocative words in the character's description, and there are many scenes that I'm trying for the first time, so I'm feeling nervous."
Regarding the filming, she commented, "When I read the script, I thought, 'Wow.' I was a little scared about what kind of world it would be. I also thought that filming would be very difficult, and there were a lot of things to think about, but since there are many scenes that require physical exertion, I am proceeding with filming while carefully consulting with my manager and the production staff."
Watanabe, who plays Keita, Elena's lover, said, "When we were directing the live streaming scene between the two of us, we were instructed to 'have Elena walk around Keita like a female leopard.' I really liked that scene, so I think it's worth paying attention to." Yanai smiled and replied, "Thank you. I hope you'll watch it. Of course, it was my first time doing something like that, and I learned a lot, thinking, 'Oh, so there's a technique like that.'"
Rio Uchida and Ryosuke Soda also attended the press conference.
