Interview with Kutsuna Shiori: from Pocky Princess to college student
"Web DeView no Girls" made an interview with Australian-Japanese actress Kutsuna Shiori (17) who is currently starring in the au mobile dorama "Shugatsu Sensen Ijou Ari". Having made herself a name as the "Pocky Princess", she now has to portray the role of a female college student. DeView talked with her about the dorama, her role and Kutsuna herself.
Kutsuna plays a college student and leader of a study research team that seeks to discover wrongdoings in the way companies interact with the job searching people during job interviews. For that reason they regularly go to such interviews without actually trying to get the jobs and without informing the companies beforehand. More info here.
"This feels like a big step for me now. After all I've never made anything with such a theme before. I've already played a couple of high school students, but this time the role is much older than myself. When playing this role, I definitely have to act very self-confident and show some great persuasive power. It's also a role representing the standpoint of many college students who are anxiously and maybe even angrily hunting for a job right now. After building up the frustration she eventually discovers a new light towards the end and it would be great if some actual students did discover it as well."
Her role also requires Kutsuna to use difficult economic terms a lot of times. It would already be difficult for a normal girl her age, but it must be even more bothersome for someone who has been living outside of Japan until only a couple of years ago. "I surprisingly was able to understand a lot after looking up all the terms, but before that I got flooded with kanji I've never seen before in my life and didn't know where to start at all (laughs). In my case I wasn't really able to get into the role due to the lack of vocabulary and knowledge (about Japanese society), so I started to study all the words until I completely understood them all and also watched a lot of programs talking about social problems."
Kutsuna really tried to sincerely answer all the questions and carefully chose her words one-by-one. Her Pocky commercials earned her a very enthusiastic image with a lot of pep, but in the dorama she looks quite different to her image and also stayed very calm throughout the interview.
"The outfit for the commercials is quite revealing (laughs), but everyone just says that the color is really vibrant and leaves a huge impact. It's really nice that they are so popular. However, it looks like people think that I'm always in such high spirits and once at an interview the reporter was kinda surprised that I didn't enter the room while dancing around (laughs). However, it seems like there are lot of people who really have such a bright image, though maybe not as far as entering a room while dancing (laughs)."
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source; KAWAIIJOYUU