The cast of One Piece Live Action has been clearly known since the series debuted on the platform last month. The cast is packed with young talents who devoted time and energy to bringing one of the greatest shōnen manga to life. Even the Mangaka, Eiichiro Oda, praised the cast and has been supervising the series himself.
One Piece’s flawless chef and the member of the Straw Hat Pirates, Sanji, has been played by British actor Taz Skylar. He makes his first appearance in the series when Luffy, Nami, and Zoro encounter him at the Baratie. As the story progresses, audiences get to know more about the character, and he becomes a part of the Straw Hats.
How did Taz Skylar prepare for his role of Sanji in Netflix’s One Piece?
In the recent interview regarding the One Piece Live Action project, it was revealed that Taz Skylar was learning to cook along with training in Tae-Kwon-Do for 8 hours a day. He was reluctant to find a stand-in for the scenes involving cooking and wanted to perform those scenes himself. He also opened up about empathizing with his character regarding how trauma influences a person.
“Sanji’s a person who had to fend for himself from a young age and did so by becoming a master of his trade. Weirdly I’ve lived a similar life… I left home when I was fifteen and became an apprentice to surfboard builders. All of which resemble Sanji’s mentor Zeff in some way or another. And I learned to fend for myself through trial and error. This was all before I started acting and writing. His trauma and his reasons for leaving are the thing that drives his behaviour in adulthood… I have my own things I was running away from and which drive my own behaviour now… But we won’t go into those, that’s a whole other story.”
He also talks about Sanji being different from other characters in an interview with Zero Nine. He talks about the character depending more upon kicks while fighting to avoid damaging his hands which are precious because he is a chef.
“Every other character has an external object they had to practice with. This doesn’t diminish the process of learning how to be good at something. However, in my case, I couldn’t learn to use the object until it became usable. Understanding the mechanics of kicking, for example, doesn’t count unless you can reach the target.”
Oh man, this guy. Trained so hard, so committed. An inspiration to watch.
As to the cooking – every now and then he’d come to rehearsal with another awesome dish, albeit served with bloodied hands nipped in the process of learning knife skills!
What a joy https://t.co/jPB5jZrytV— Marc Jobst (@marcjobst1) June 5, 2023
Even the Director, Marc Jobst, posted on X to highlight what Taz Skylar accomplished during production.
Did Taz Skylar do his own stunts in Netflix’s One Piece?
Taz Skylar wanted to portray the character of Sanji as he was in the original source material. For this reason, he had to learn to fight without the use of his hands. Since Sanji was a chef for the Straw Hats, he refrained from using his hands in combat to avoid damaging them.
Taz Skylar affirms about performing his own stunts, and all the kicks were done by him. Skylar told Nuit Magazine, “I did absolutely every single one of my own kicks in the show. There is no CGI on my leg, and my stunt double was my trainer, and was very enthusiastically cheering me from the side. He was with me throughout every step of it, and I had various other trainers.”
“I wanted to do everything. Like, it was very much one of those jobs that if I was in for a penny, I was in for a pound.” He furthermore told Nuit Magazine about how he decided to take on all the fighting and stunts himself. The young actor was quite dedicated to ensuring the accuracy of the character he was playing, and it indeed reflected in the series.
Source: Nuit Magazine, Zero Nine
