Taz Skylar on the new Straw Hats in One Piece Season 2: "It was a fun experience, it definitely became exponential"

It's still unclear how far we'll get with Luffy and his friends in the second season of the One Piece live action series on Netflix. Obviously, we're in the big leagues now, as the merry crew of pirate dreamers are set to enter the Grand Line, the legendary ringed sea of the world where the legendary One Piece treasure is supposed to be found at the end, and the one who gets it will be proclaimed King of the Pirates. And it looks like the current five members of the Straw Hat Crew are going to need some extra help.

Because in One Piece Season 2 the world gets bigger, and so do the needs of the production, which gains in scale and recurring members. And it was about this last part that we had a very special chat with Taz Skylar, the Canary Islands-born actor who plays Sanji in the series. Taz took time out of his schedule during the San Diego Comic-Con in Malaga, in an interview that you can watch with subtitles below.

As well as talking to us about how the showrunners found the perfect recipe for successfully bringing manganime to a live-action series, when asked what he could tell us about the second batch of episodes, which will premiere in 2026, Skylar naturally kept almost everything a secret, but the success of the first season also put a responsibility on their shoulders. "I think for us, the first time around, it was like a very small microcosm, because it was just the five of us," he began, "Some people came and went, but we were the only ones who stayed for the whole show."

"And even though my character didn't appear in the first season until a few episodes later, I was there from the beginning. I was training. I was one of the Straw Hats. We were all coming together during that same period."

In fact, he got so into the character of Sanji that he became an impromptu chef during production. "I was learning how to cook. I was cooking for the set."

"I was training. Everyone else was filming. We were talking about what was going on. We were getting closer to each other, but we were the only ones who had a bond at the time. And then, the second time around, there were a lot of new people who had come into the circle who were going to be present for, if not the whole duration, then most of it.

"It suddenly became clear to us that now our job was, in a way, to include everyone and facilitate that space where everyone could feel included in a family."

What do you think, are you looking forward to the second season of One Piece on Netflix?