At the end of August 2023, the live-action adaptation of One Piece arrived to Netflix subscription holders, and it didn’t take long for the series to become a huge hit for one of the best streaming services. Unfortunately, One Piece’s premiere happened as both the writers and actors strikes were still going, meaning that the actors couldn’t do press or attend special events tied to the show. So instead, Taz Skylar, who plays Sanji, organized a different way he and his four main co-stars could celebrate One Piece becoming available to the masses: traveling to Japan, the franchise’s birthplace.
Skylar discussed this topic while being interviewed by Movieweb about his new movie, Cleaner, which opened on the 2025 release schedule this past weekend and co-stars Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen. While he understandably couldn’t share any specific details about what’s ahead in One Piece Season 2, he did have this to say when he was asked if he was surprised by Season 1’s success at the time:
That was a tricky [situation], because it was in the middle of the strikes as well… Essentially, because the strikes cancelled all of the different premieres that we were going to do in different countries, I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Well, I have two ways to go about this. I can either go to a third world country somewhere nice with palm trees and coconut water, and I can just switch my phone off and forget about everything, and then check in in a month to see if we survived or we died. Or we could fly into the heart of the storm and face it with our head held high and with pride over what we’d spent essentially the last year and a half of our life doing.
One Piece certainly didn’t need any press or premieres to drum up interest, ranking as one of the best shows to binge watch on Netflix in a matter of days. Nevertheless, Taz Skylar was faced with two options about what to do in the absence of not being able to promote the show, and he chose the one that let him reunite with Iñaki Godoy (Monkey D. Luffy), Mackenyu (Roronoa Zoro), Emily Rudd (Nami) and Jacob Romero Gibson (Usopp) on their terms. He continued:
And I remember I pitched it in our WhatsApp group. I was like, ‘Hey guys, why don’t we all go to Japan together regardless and just spend the day that it comes out together as a family. Because I really don’t want to run from it and I really don’t want any of us to be alone if this doesn’t turn out to be a success. And I would really love for us to be together if it does turn out to be a success.’ So we all did exactly that. We all flew to Japan from different corners of the world, and we hung out for five days. And then on the fifth day, we watched the show together.
So Taz Skylar got together with the other actors who comprise this iteration of the Straw Hat Pirates and viewed One Piece Season 1 to cap off their vacation in Japan. They also kept a close eye on how the show was being critically received, with Skylar recalling:
We sat there looking at the Rotten Tomatoes score as we were going through the show and being like, ‘Ok, we’re good! We’re good! I think we’re gonna make it! We’re gonna make it!’ And then somebody else would be like, ‘No, but wait! Because [in] 24 hours, everything could change.’ So it’s like looking at the stock market. Thankfully it just kept going up and up and up and up and up, and then after a few weeks, we were like, ‘Ok, I think we’ve done it.’ And I think it was only like two weeks later that we got to go again for Season 2.
Yes, One Piece was renewed pretty quickly, a sharp contrast from Netflix’s last major live-action anime adaptation, Cowboy Bebop, being cancelled after just one season in roughly the same amount of time. Season 2 began filming in South Africa in June 2024, and it was announced earlier this month that production had concluded. Among the new characters Sanji and his cohorts will meet include Joe Manganiello’s Crocodile, Katey Sagal’s Dr. Kureha, Lera Abova’s Mr. 0 and David Dastmalchian’s Mr. 3, among many others.
While not official, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that One Piece Season 2 will be among the offerings on the 2025 TV schedule. A 2026 drop is looking more plausible, though hopefully well if Season 3 is a go before this year is over.
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