Katey Sagal on Joining One Piece and the Timeliness of Season 2s Tyrannical Ruler

[This story contains spoilers from One Piece season two.]

When a show breaks out the way Netflix‘s live-action adaptation of One Piece exploded in 2023, it’s not wrong to assume a trail of Hollywood cameos will soon follow. Never mind that the original manga, created by Eiichiro Oda and initially published in 1997, was already such a global phenomenon in its almost three-decade run that it is now nearly synonymous with the Japanese publishing medium. In many senses, Luffy and the Straw Hat Crew are not only household names (or at least very recognizable faces) within American geek culture thanks to both the manga and existing anime adaptation, but sometimes even among those whose interests don’t favor the juggernauts that are both Japanese industries.

So when Netflix announced its season two cast additions in 2025, it was unsurprising to see a number of familiar faces. Among them was Katey Sagal, a queen of the small screen known for playing bold, colorful, fierce and at times rough-around-the-edges women. And while not a staple of big genre projects — instead garnering most of her career acclaim and award recognition for her roles in Married… with Children, 8 Simple Rules, Sons of Anarchy and Rebel, as well as long-running adult animation Futurama — her casting has been wholly embraced by One Piece fans.

Sagal’s portrayal of Dr. Kureha was equally exciting for both the team and the actress, who told The Hollywood Reporter she was first approached around spring or summer of 2024. “There was no audition. It was an offer. I was just so excited. You get jobs where you’re just like, ‘Oh my God,’” she recalls. “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.”

One Piece season two co-showrunner Joe Tracz recalls, “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. 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.”

Sagal of her early relationship to the series was thanks to her husband, prolific TV creator Kurt Sutter. “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,” she tells THR. “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.”

Sagal plays Dr. Kureha, a 140-year-old doctor who has become the lone practitioner on Drum Island after the other doctors were rounded up by King Wapol (Rob Colletti), a tyrannical leader whose self-important nature and volatile tendencies have crushed his once-flourishing kingdom. Dubbed a “witch” by the townspeople, Kureha operates out of the abandoned Drum Castle, which is situated at the top of a mountain overlooking the town. There, she begrudgingly trains a young talking reindeer named Tony Tony Chopper (Mikaela Hoover, N’Kone Mametja, and Gavin Gomes), who becomes her ward of sorts after her eccentric and impassioned friend and colleague, Dr. Hiriluk (Mark Harelik) dies.

While Sagal walked in knowing very little about Kureha, she was immediately drawn to the character. “She was such a badass, and also heartwarming and a little bit squishy on the inside. I found her young in spirit, even though she’s supposed to be 140. And what does time mean, really?” she says. “I loved that she was an older woman who just kept her shit together and wasn’t afraid to wear tight t-shirts.”

Her transformation into the character was shaped in large part by the costuming, hair and props, with her ultimate presentation dictated heavily by Oda’s vision. “Putting the whole drag on informed me about her, and it was not difficult to find her within all that,” she tells THR. “I’m always somebody who likes to work from the physical. I love the wardrobe. 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.”

But stepping into the shoes of her character wasn’t the only thing Sagal might have had to get used to as part of her One Piece run. Sagal notes that with One Piece, “the world is so big,” compared to other projects she’s worked on. But her younger castmates “are all so great, all so welcoming,” and, alongside the scripts, lent themselves to moments that were not only very intimate but really character- and relationship-driven.

“That’s what makes it work. I was very emotionally moved by that first season, and then when I got the script for the second, it wasn’t a stretch in that there was a lot of humanity. That is always something I relate to,” she explains. “So it wasn’t like overacting in a way you might think. It was very grounded. The writing was so good, and that’s really what you look for. Especially when it’s a bigger-than-life character, like they all tend to be. What I responded to, even when I first saw it. It’s so real. I just bought Luffy’s whole journey. I bought Nami’s thing and Sanji’s thing. You always look for the touchstones, and it was on the page.”

In season two, one of the biggest touchstones is Dr. Kureha’s journey with Hiriluk, Chopper and Wapol. When it came to Chopper’s storyline, “I will say that I related to it,” Sagal says. “Everybody has a different love language, and Kureha is used to being on her own. She’s accustomed to that. So when Chopper comes into her life, as much as she doesn’t want him to come into her life, he just tugs at her heartstrings. He’s so sincere. To me, the heartbreak that she feels when he leaves is warranted. You kind of watch her, against even her own desire, care for Chopper. She loved Hiriluk. She loved him, and he was gone, and she just toughed it out through that. Now Chopper’s also leaving.”

As for Wapol, a tyrant who, among several decrees ordered all the island’s doctors to be captured, exiled or killed, portraying Kureha’s stand against him alongside the Straw Hats — protecting the role of careworkers and science, even as both had seemingly become villainized on Drum Island — “was satisfying.”

“It was a really gnarly situation that Wapol presented when he banned all the doctors from Drum Island, with her and Hiriluk the only ones that somewhat survived,” Sagal says. “Is it current? Does it hit those notes? Absolutely. Banning, segregation, immigrants — all of it. I don’t know what came first because I don’t know when the Drum Island story was written, but the story of tyranny and of big bad guys wanting to take over is very old. So it feels coincidental, even though I don’t really believe in coincidence, that all this would happen at the same time. This story of fighting against this tyrannical person is very timely, and so yes, the spirit of that was definitely in there. And the spirit, also, of saving. She’s a doctor who helps people. She’s got noble intent. She’s got a hard way of explaining it, but is full of noble intent.”

Season two’s finale is a touching hat tip to what will likely be Sagal’s most significant screen time as the live-action Kuhera, but the actress shared she is currently doing some “voice over” work, signaling her time in the One Piece universe is not quite done. “I’m also doing the Lego version. So I go in and do the voice over of the little Lego Dr. Kureha,” she says. [Update: TheLego animated special was just announced.]

In the meantime, when asked whether she’ll venture more into the manga space after this role, she tells THR: “It has opened my eyes. It’s not like I’ve rushed to watch or read, but I might. The live action is so appealing to me and is what I come from, even though I’m so involved with animation on Futurama, and I love Futurama. So I’ll never say never.”

One Piece season two is now streaming on Netflix.

April 7, 6 a.m. Updated to note the Lego animated special announcement.