Casting Netflix‘s live-action show One Piece was not an easy feat!
The show is based on Eiichiro Oda‘s manga of the same name and follows Monkey D. Luffy, a pirate who aspires to become the King of the Pirates. He’s determined to find the mythical One Piece.
Iñaki Godoy stars as Monkey in the show, and the cast also includes Emily Rudd, Mackenyu, Jacob Romero Gibson, Taz Skyler, Vincent Regan, and Morgan Davies.
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During an interview with Screen Rant, the director Marc Jobst opened up about why casting for this project was so tricky.
“We wanted actors that had heart, that had warmth, and that we could build together, that we feel there’s going to be some kind of chemistry, because that’s magic,” he said. “That’s not something that, you know, no matter how good the scripts are, it doesn’t matter how good the sets are, doesn’t matter how good a director I am, if you haven’t got that, you can’t create it.”
Marc explained, “One Piece will live and die on how the audience fall in love with these characters, so we started that process really, really early on. As a director, I like to give my actors quite a bit of audition time, so I don’t just get them to come in and read a piece and then say, ‘Thanks very much, we’ll get back to you.’”
“I like to work them through scenes, work them quite hard, so we tend to do anything between 20-minute and 30-minute auditions,” he added.
The director also emphasized the importance of casting physical actors. “Not only actors who can act, hold drama in emotional scenes, but also who could carry some of the action,” he said. “Because the way that I shoot action, and the way that I wanted to shoot action for One Piece in particular, was in big, long, flowing shots that follow them through from one sequence to the next, and then picked up another actor in all the rest of it. Now, if you’re constantly having to replace the actor with stunt doubles, you can’t do that, and that’s something that I learned on The Witcher when I was working with Henry Cavill.”
It seems like the process worked out well because the reclusive creator of the manga work gave his stamp of approval! See what Eiichiro had to say about the show.