Katey Sagal, who is known for her iconic roles in Sons of Anarchy and Married… with Children, is appearing in season two of One Piece. She is playing Dr. Kureha, a 140-year-old doctor who operates out of the abandoned Drum Castle.
“There was no audition,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in an April 6 interview. “It was an offer. I was just so excited. You get jobs where you’re just like, ‘Oh my God.’ It came pretty much after I’d watched [the first season]. It was a wonderful call to get. I was out of my mind. Then they started sending me the images and who the character is.”
She went on to say, “I was not super familiar with manga at all. Anime—which is like Pokémon?—I’ve raised kids all about Pokémon. They were Pokémon freaks. But the manga I didn’t know. My husband came home one day and said he’d been talking to somebody at Netflix who told him to watch this show called One Piece. So we sat down with my 17-year-old. We didn’t know what it was going to be, and could not stop watching it. That first season was so heartwarming and edgy. It hit all the right notes for me, my husband and our 17-year-old. It was beautiful.”
Co-showrunner Joe Tracz also spoke about Sagal’s casting. “We reached out to her, and she had watched that first season with her family, and had no idea that it was an adaptation of anything,” he explained. “She just thought it was a really good show on Netflix. The fact that the show existed and had proved that it could pull this live-action adaptation off meant that we were able to reach people that were on our vision board.”
When discussing her character, Sagal also spoke about the importance of the wardrobe. “I’m always somebody who likes to work from the physical,” she said. “Shoes are super important to me. The minute I saw that leather suit, I was like, ‘I so get this.’ And my wardrobe is exactly what’s in the manga, down to the glasses on my head and the bottle. It was really fun to see it come to life. It’s rare that you see an animated version actually translate so well into live action.”
One Piece season two is currently streaming on Netflix.
