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Stephen McCarty

For his latest small-screen starring role, Japanese actor Tomohisa Yamashita went deep: emotionally and literally.
“I went to 15 metres [underwater],” he says. “It was a hard shoot, but I think it helped.”
Yamashita is in London discussing the forthcoming second season of Apple TV’s Drops of God, a multilingual thriller set in the international wine world that draws on French vinicultural expertise and is based on the Japanese manga series of (almost) the same name by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto.
It would have been understandable if Yamashita had made that 15-metre dive in the search for peace and quiet, simply based on the fact that so many cultural strands are woven into the series’ production, including dialogue in English, French, Japanese and occasionally Italian. The real reason he did it was different.

His character, Issei Tomine, is a highly paid Tokyo oenologist. He is also taciturn, permanently grumpy and, thanks to an affluent upbringing, indifferent to the opinions of the corporate clients seeking his professional advice. An imposing, affection-free mother inspires his sullen attitude to life.
For Yamashita, an otherwise engaging television personality and former member of J-pop group News, being permanently miserable and banned from smiling was a challenge.
“It was actually very hard to be in the character of Issei,” he says, smiling. “It was heavy. But when I went to do [one particular] dive, I went 15 metres down – and that experience helped to build Issei.”
Yamashita, 40, is being modest because he was not just diving but free-diving, with no reliance on any scuba gear. However incongruous they may seem in a show about wine, the free-diving scenes in Drops of God help explain Issei’s steeliness – and are entirely genuine.
“My teacher was a world champion and gave me lots of tips, because I didn’t have much time to practise,” he says. “I appreciated that the production crew prepared the stunt guy, but I wanted to do it myself, as much as I could. I went deep.”
Drops of God season one popped an impressive cork when it won the International Emmy Award for best drama series in November 2024. The eight episodes followed French oenophile Camille, played by Fleur Geffrier, in her efforts to secure the legacy left by a wine expert father, manipulative even from beyond the grave. She was forced to compete in a wine-tasting contest against a half-brother she never knew she had – and who turned out to be Issei.
Speaking alongside Yamashita, Geffrier reveals season two’s Camille is a departure from the season one version.
“Camille is really different from season one to two,” she says. “As we go deeper into the character, she thinks she’s OK and settled, everything is fine. But she’s just hiding her personal demons, and now they come back at her – that’s interesting to see.”

The new season, like the first, was shot mainly in Japan and France and has the siblings campaigning to save a divine-tasting wine whose vineyards are threatened with destruction by a callous developer. That takes them to a country emerging as a favoured location for television and film productions: Georgia, on the Black Sea coast.
Tax incentives aside, it is “important to put the spotlight on that country”, Geffrier says. “They make wine in a very different way to how we do it, in giant clay jars. People have little cellars and make their own. They plant vines in their gardens: family wines.
“They hold supras, like big parties, with their friends and neighbours. And if you arrive late, you have to catch up on the alcohol!”
When asked if she was the stereotypical French child who had wine with every meal, Geffrier, 39, reacts with mock anger, exclaiming, “How do you know that?”
She adds: “Yeah, my dad was a chef, my grandmother owned a hotel restaurant for 20 years and I lived in the southwest of France, surrounded by vines, so there was wine on the table.
“For me, it was normal, but I tried my first – secret – sip when I was eight and didn’t like it at all!”

Things were different for Yamashita before season one.
“I hired a wine teacher and took 40 hours of lessons before I left Japan,” he says. “Living in Paris, I had a teacher who recommended this restaurant, this specific fish dish and a specific wine. I realised there was a pairing – and that experience blew my mind and made me want to learn more.
“On location this season, a guy told us how passionate he was about making wine. Then he said one beautiful thing: I asked him what his dream was, and he said, ‘I want to make a better wine than my grandpa made.’ That touched my heart.”
Drops of God season two begins on January 21 on Apple TV


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Apple TV’s Drops of God stars Tomohisa Yamashita and Fleur Geffrier go deeper in season 2

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Tomohisa Yamashita in a still from Drops of God season two. Photo: Apple TV

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Yamashita talks about ‘hard’ free-diving scenes in the wine drama’s new season as co-star Fleur Geffrier shares how her character got darker


Yamashita talks about ‘hard’ free-diving scenes in the wine drama’s new season as co-star Fleur Geffrier shares how her character got darker.


Apple TV

Wine and Spirits

Apple TV’s Drops of God stars Tomohisa Yamashita and Fleur Geffrier go deeper in season 2

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Yamashita talks about ‘hard’ free-diving scenes in the wine drama’s new season as co-star Fleur Geffrier shares how her character got darker

Yamashita talks about ‘hard’ free-diving scenes in the wine drama’s new season as co-star Fleur Geffrier shares how her character got darker