Actress Naoko Mori — star of Torchwood and Absolutely Fabulous, who landed the lead in Miss Saigon as a teenager before she'd even been to drama school — joins Scott & Jamie to share the three stories that shaped who she became, spanning cultural identity and the joy of being lost in a story
Stories Discussed
Story 1: Norwegian Wood — Haruki Murakami
Type: Novel. Murakami's ability to move from the beautifully mundane — cooking spaghetti, listening to jazz — into dreamlike, unexpected places mirrors something Naoko recognises in Japanese storytelling itself: inward-looking, lingering, never quite written in bold italics.
Story 2: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim — David Sedaris
Type: Short story. collection The first writer who made Naoko laugh out loud. She loves Sedaris for his precision — descriptions so vivid and funny you can't help but see exactly what he's saying.
Story 3: Mitsuo Aida
Type: Poetry. Not a single book but the collected words of Mitsuo Aida — a Japanese poet and calligrapher whose short, conversational lines of wisdom Naoko returns to almost every day.