``AWAKE'' If we were to make movies only for movie lovers, Japanese movies would end. Tatsuya Wakaba's thoughts on entertainment during the coronavirus pandemic [Actor's Interview Vol.10]

He suggested that he wanted to act as a "human being" rather than a character.

Q: As you worked on creating the character with the help of your friends, what kind of person did you come to understand Asakawa Riku as?

Wakaba: At the scriptwriting stage, both the director and producer said "yin and yang," with Kiyota Eiichi, played by Yoshizawa Ryo, as yin, and Asakawa Riku, played by me, as yang. Eiichi was very twisted, possessing something like sludgy magma, while Riku himself was bright and cheerful. But I felt that if I turned that into a character, it wouldn't be interesting at all...

After all, Riku has his own conflicts, and he is a "human" after all. Even when playing a murderer, the human essence does not change, and while I listened to what the director and producer said and said "I see," I tried out "But Riku is like this" in the test, and it felt like everyone digested it.

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Q: So it was Wakaba herself who suggested and made the changes.

Wakaba: I focused on making the role not just a character, but a person. It's very easy to make a person like Riku into a single character. It may be easy to play the role if you say, "Riku doesn't do this," or "Riku is like this because he is like this," or "Riku is this kind of character." But I wanted to play him as a multifaceted human being.

It's the same for me, but now I'm wearing cool costumes, wearing an actor's mask and talking coolly, but when I get home it's completely different. I worry about things like, "I have to do the laundry," or "I accidentally washed the wrong sweater," or "Which should I buy, "The Red Fox" or "The Green Tanuki"? That's just how humans are, and we can be a little sneaky. I think everyone is probably like that, and if you limit yourself to that, your possibilities will be reduced.

When I judged that "Riku won't do this," I cut off one of the possibilities of the work. I wanted to try this time to see how far I could go without being told that the character was broken. I wanted to make something that had a human touch, not the yin and yang that everyone thinks of.

The confrontation scene with Ryo Yoshizawa, which I felt was a comfortable tension