Shibasaki Ko takes on her first drama leading role in NTV Winter 2015 drama "Marumaru Tsuma"

Shibasaki Ko will be taking on her first leading role in a drama series through the upcoming NTV Winter 2015 drama "Marumaru Tsuma" (XX-Wife) which begins its run from January 2015 in the Wednesdays 10pm timeslot. She will play the role of a mysterious wife supporting her husband played by Higashiyama Noriyuki who is a newscaster and the scriptwriter of this drama will be Yukawa Kazuhiko who was behind the success of hit drama "Kaseifu no Mita" in 2011.

Shibasaki's character Hikari is the wife of Yasuda Masazumi (Higashiyama) who is a popular newscaster and goes all out to support her husband in every way. She is great at household chores and is able to make her husband look good in front of others. However, there is a secret between them thus explaining why the title doesn't explain what kind of wife she is and that will be explained in the first episode. Filming for the entire drama had been completed.

Shibasaki commented in an interview that her roles so far had been more focused on the emotional side of things but this time, she had to deal with a huge volume of lines so it was a fresh challenge for her. Besides, there was a constant struggle between emotions and common sense in the story which made it a tough battle up till filming was completed. Despite the fact that Shibasaki has been the lead in many movies to date, this is surprisingly her first leading role in a drama series. However, she has never thought much about this because she doesn't think of movies and dramas as totally separate things. It was also great this time that she got lots of support from the people around her and it was good that they didn't have to film as the drama is airing so it took off a fair bit of the pressure. As for her first time playing a housewife, Shibasaki admitted that she was looking forward to becoming a housewife one day when she was young but she doesn't feel the same way now.

Source: Yomiuri Hochi