Good girl pays the price for being naughty instead of
nice
Actress Akiko Yada's squeaky clean image took a battering when the
paparazzi caught her on a dirty weekend trip to Hawaii with
glitterati bad boy Manabu Oshio and now she looks like she'll pay
for it with her career, according to Shukan Shincho.
Yada was the face of the enormously popular TV campaign for Aflac
insurance company, but has lost the job after her photos were
splashed all over the scandal sheets.
"She'd been appearing in the company's commercials since 2002, but
won't be in any more ads after her contract runs out on July 28," a
reporter on the entertainment beat tells Shukan Shincho. "Tetsuro
Yanagiba, who has been appearing with her, is going to keep on
doing the ads, which effectively means that Yada was sacked."
Producers of the commercial admit that Yada's scandal cost her the
job.
"In today's society, there shouldn't be anything wrong with being
spotted with a guy, but the image she has projected is of a
well-mannered, prim-and-proper young lady, and the gap between the
two is just too big," the producer says. "Oshio is notorious,
swearing at reporters and generally being uncouth, which has left
him with an awful reputation. When the women's magazine took photos
of her pouring suntan lotion over the back of guy whose body was
covered in tattoos she looked like nothing more than a typical
yakuza whore."
The revealing shots are expected to be harmful for the 28-year-old
actress.
"Yada'll probably lose lots of her sponsors," the producer says.
"She was in the class making around 30 million yen a commercial,
but she won't be able to command that much anymore."
Many feel the only hope Yada has of surviving in Japan's cutthroat
entertainment world is to dump Oshio.
"What's most frightening about this whole thing is that she's not
likely to give him the flick. Yada's incorrigible. Oshio is mainly
making a living performing with his band and Yada, cool as you
like, always turns up for his shows," the producer says. "Just the
other day, they were spotted on a date at (Tokyo's) Odaiba -- right
in front of the Fuji TV building. It was like as though she
deliberately wanted somebody to spot her with him."
Not everybody sees the scandal as a total blight on the actress'
name.
"If Yada eventually wants to be seen as a serious actress, she's
got to make sure this scandal doesn't come to much," entertainment
commentator Masaaki Hiruma says. "In some ways, the scandal could
even open doors for her. But, she's got to get rid of Oshio. She's
finished as an actress as long as she's with him."
Another entertainment beat reporter advises Yada to get in
first.
"Oshio has gone out with and dumped Natsumi Abe, Naomi Zaisen,
Ayana Hirayama and loads of other stars. He's you're archetypical
playboy," the hack tells Shukan Shincho. "There are already
whispers about that he's got another woman now. Yada might even end
up finding herself dumped."