In the first few days of its release, One Piece rose to become the number 1 ranked TV series in 84 different countries around the world.

This topped a record set by Stranger Things season four and Wednesday, the streamer’s adaptation of the Addams Family. Both shows ranked number 1 in 83 territories over their first weekends of release.

Based on Japan’s highest-selling manga series in history, the live-action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s iconic pirate tale has enjoying rave reviews from critics and fans alike, garnering over 10,000 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes with a 95 per cent audience score—Netflix’s highest audience score ever.

Here are some things, know one told you about the cast of One Piece.

Not My First Rodeo.

Iñaki Godoy stars as the lead character, Monkey D. Luffy in the show. He is the optimistic leader of his group of friends, the Straw Hat Pirates, and is determined to become King of the Pirates upon finding the treasure known as One Piece.

As well as playing Luffy in the live-action One Piece on Netflix, Iñaki Godoy is also the voice actor behind the Spanish dub of his character.

Furthermore, this is not his first Netflix project. He appeared in thirteen episodes of Who Killed Sara? in 2021. and in ten episodes of The Imperfects’ in 2022.

The actor who has been a staple on TV in Mexico is very passionate about Alopecia awareness because his sister, Mia has the disease.

Alopecia is an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss. The actor even became a spokeserson for the Children’s Alopecia Project Grupo México association and has detailed Mia’s experience with the disease on his website.

As for his onset routine for One Piece, Iñaki Godoy explained to Teen Vogue that he would walk onto set every morning with a WWE theme song playing in the background – resembling the type of fun environment Luffy would bring to his own crew:

I thought to myself, “What is the most important part about Luffy?” Well, he has fun, right? So what is my goal here as an actor to embody this character? Well, I wanna have fun and I want to create a fun environment. So every time I arrived on set, I would blast the John Cena theme song from the car. Sometimes it was the John Cena [theme song,] sometimes it was The Rock’s [theme song]…

Long-time coming.

Emily Rudd who plays Nami in the show had a not-so-secret long-term game plan that helped her nail her role in the show.

Discussing the audition process in an official One Piece comic earlier this year, Emily said:

“One Piece is one of my favourite manga and I’ve always felt drawn to Nami in particular. When I heard they were making a live-action series, I started not-so-secretly playing the long game in lobbying for this role for three years.”

Emily then explained: “I coloured my hair red and got it cut just like Nami’s. I posted a video of myself when I was younger tumbling and doing backflips, things like that. I was trying my hardest to get anyone who might notice to really see me as Nami.”

She ended by saying: “So to audition finally, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I did it! I can’t believe I did it. What timeline am I in? How did I get so lucky?’ It was crazy. I got to work my dream job.”

Emily’s prior roles include Cindy Berman in Netflix’s Fear Street, Hunters, and the Amazon’s show Them, among others. She also starred in DJ Snake’s “Let Me Love You” music video.

Family of actors.

Although of Japanese descent, Mackenyu’s who stars as Zoro, known as the “Pirate Hunter” in the show actually lives in the USA and comes from a family of actors.

Mackenyu’s father, Sonny Chiba is an actor, director, producer and martial artist. Then there is also his uncle, Jiro Yabuki who is an actor from Japan. Then there is his adoptive older sister, Juri Manase who is also an actress.

Mackenyu is a man of many talents. The actor learned horseback riding as well as yabusame (mounted archery in traditional Japanese archery). He also studied Kyokushin Karate, finishing third in a national championship. But it does not end there! He was also a water polo player, a gymnast, and a member of the wrestling squad.

While international audiences may be seeing Mackenyu for the first time through One Piece, this isn’t his first rodeo in the world of live-action adaptations. In fact, his filmography screams anime and manga lover! Mackenyu has starred in the live adaptions of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Rurouni Kenshin: The Final, Fullmetal Alchemist, and most recently Knights Of The Zodiac alongside Sean Bean, Famke Janssen and Madison Iseman. As a result, the actor has steadily gained a fandom in Japan amongst the anime and manga community for his roles.

About preparing for his role in the show, the actor revealed he got two more piercings on his left ear in order to don Zoro’s signature gold earrings.

“They were painful,” he said, with a laugh. “But for Zoro, I’d do anything.”

And as for his green hair? The actor actually dyed his real hair into the bright shade.

“It’s my natural green hair, what are you talking about?” he said.

In January, 2023, the actor officially announced his marriage to his non-celebrity wife. Not much is known about Mackenyu’s other half apart from the fact that she is a retired child actress and is seven years older than him.

Cook OR Fight?

British actor Taz portrays One Piece‘s resident charming and fashionable chef and eventual member of Luffy’s Straw Hat Crew, who dreams of finding the All Blue, the place where fish from all four seas can be found.

For four months before filming began, Skylar trained with tae kwon do specialists, MMA fighters, and a chef who had worked under Jamie Oliver.

“It would just be: wake up, either kick, then cook, or cook, then kick, then go do Hamlet at the Young Vic [Theatre in London],” Skylar said of his early preparation for the role. “On the matinee days, I would just cook for the cast of the play.”

The actor began training for two hours every day, which he immediately realized would not be adequate because he had no prior martial arts experience. So his training programme was upped to four hours, then to five hours a day.

He ended up flying his personal trainer out to South Africa so he could train for even longer each day. In the end, Taz did 10 hours of fight training a day to be able to fully portray Sanji on-screen.

This Is Me.

One of the intriguing characters in One Piece is no doubt Koby, played by Morgan Davvies.

In real life, Davies has gone through hardships of his own, and he revealed that he went through “extreme pain” after coming out as transgender at the age of 13.

“At 13, I came out as trans, just to mum and Catherine [Poulton, his trusted agent and friend] and a few close friends,” he said. “I was going through a lot, thinking: ‘Who the f**k am I and where am I going?’”

After initially coming out, Davies went back into the closet as he tried to find the confidence to act again.

“I wanted to act but it’s really hard to put yourself on a screen because as soon as you do, people make assumptions about who you are. It’s so public.

“I wasn’t even ready to leave my room, let alone go on a TV show and be like, ‘Hey, I’m Morgan’. I didn’t even know I was Morgan. I was really confused.”

He went on: “There wasn’t a place for me, there was no intersection between what I wanted to do and who I was, and it was really f*cking hard to think about.

Everything changed in 2020, when he landed the role of Oberon in Australian series The End, and his character tackled issues around gender dysphoria and teenage angst.

One Piece‘s Koby isn’t 21-year-old Davies’ only breakout role this year: In April, he appeared as Danny in the hit horror film Evil Dead Rise.