Actor Honami Suzuki debuted in 1984 and has starred in many classic dramas, including the TV drama “Tokyo Love Story,” in which she played the lead role, which became a huge hit and a social phenomenon. In 2020, she will release her essay collection “Leo, Type A, Heigo. in which she wrote about her discomfort with the gender gap. In her essay collection “Leo, Type A, Heigo” in 2020, she wrote about her discomfort with the gender gap.
Suzuki Honami, who attracts audiences with her “too scary” acting, talks about the entertainment industry.
Suzuki plays Yoko Kodama, the female president of a major entertainment agency, in ABEMA’s original drama “Scandal Eve,” which will be distributed from November 19, 2025. The film depicts a forbidden battle over a scandal between an entertainment agency and a weekly magazine. Suzuki’s performance as Yoko has become a topic of conversation among viewers, who say that she is “scary” and “under pressure. The scene that drew the most attention was the “speech” that Yoko gave in the third episode. She said, “It is a fact that there are employees who left the office as if they were sanding their feet in the sand. If this kind of selfishness continues to prevail, it will threaten the order established by our predecessors. Let us protect the unity of the industry with our own hands.” (from “Scandal Eve,” episode 3) Suzuki said of Yoko, who plays the role of Yoko, “She represents the old norms. The chairman, played by Akira Emoto, is her father, and she inherited the office from him. Women in their fifties and sixties today are caught between the old norms and the new values that are emerging, and she stands between representing the old norms, but also knowing in her head the new shift. That must be a difficult position for her,” he says. As for how the entertainment world actually works, Suzuki commented on the “order of the entertainment world” and “tacit understanding” that he has felt as an actor in his career since his debut in 1984: “There are leading roles, second, third, and other roles, and as the burden falls on the leading role, power and superiority are given to the leading role. It is unreasonable to say, but that is the way it is. It is democracy and capitalism. It is very difficult to know how much of that should be done openly and properly. And especially in the workplace, where we work, “people” are the product and the subject matter, so it is difficult to make that clear. I think that’s one of the good things about being in the workplace,” he said frankly.