TOKYO (TR) – Actress Rio Uchida is carving out a bloody new niche for herself on Japanese television, starring as a wronged wife who butchers her unfaithful husband in the new TV Tokyo drama “Otto wo Koroshita Hazu Nanoni” (I Should Have Killed My Husband), reports Shukan Bunshun (Aug/ 24).
The 34-year-old actress has viewers glued to their screens with a terrifying, unhinged performance. The thriller kicks off with extreme violence: Uchida’s character, Rino, catches her husband in bed with his mistress on their fifth wedding anniversary.
In a fit of vengeance, she attacks him with a kitchen knife, straddling his body and screaming as she repeatedly plunges the blade into him. After being killed by the mistress in retaliation, Rino miraculously time-leaps back to the very day she discovered the affair, setting the stage for a calculated, second-chance revenge plot.
Cheated-on wife
This marks the second time in 2026 alone that Uchida has taken on the role of a sare-zuma (a slang term for a cheated-on wife).
In January, she starred in another TV Tokyo series, “Ryakudatsu Dakkon” (Plundered Marriage), playing an infertile woman who seeks vengeance after her husband is stolen by his pregnant mistress. That role featured equally shocking, taboo twists, including Uchida’s character blowing her alimony at host clubs and having sex with her boss in a restroom for cash—eventually resulting in her own pregnancy. She was praised for throwing herself entirely into the show’s frequent and extreme bed scenes.
The recent string of dark roles is a shift for Uchida, who began her career as a gravure idol. In her 20s, she built a reputation playing the “other woman” or sexually unrestrained characters, utilizing her glamorous looks to play home-wreckers and vixens. She later gained widespread acclaim for playing a lovable sex addict with five friends-with-benefits in the hit series “Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu” (I’ll Do It Properly in the Next Life).
Now in her 30s, Uchida has transitioned from playing the seductress to the traumatized—and sometimes homicidal—wife.
Industry critics note that Uchida’s ability to balance delicate emotional pain with fearless, violent revenge is capturing audiences. By diving headfirst into gruesome murders and bold sex scenes without losing her natural charm, the media is already crowning Uchida as the “Reiwa Era Queen of Adultery Dramas.”
