Every pirate crew needs a cook. With a captain like Monkey D Luffy, whose ship seems to sail to the sounds of his stomach, finding a cook who could whip up the most delicious bowl of fried rice to join the Straw Hat Pirates was pretty high on his priority list. Luffy finds his cook in Sanji, and Netflix’s smash hit One Piece finds their Sanji in Taz Skylar.
When the Spanish-British-Lebanese Olivier Award-nominated actor was announced to be playing the romantic chef, Sanji, in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece, Skylar was catapulted to international stardom.
Skylar and his co-star Iñaki Godoy (Luffy), were recently in Abu Dhabi for the 12th edition of the Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC), where they were met by thousands of passionate fans in straw hats queuing up for hours to take photographs, get autographs, and witness the pair’s charming interactions at panel discussions.
Esquire Middle East sat down with Taz Skylar at the MEFCC to discuss his intense stunt training, Season 2 of One Piece, and what’s in store for the rest of 2024.
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ESQ: You’re a man of many titles: actor, screenwriter, thrill-seeker, professional surfboard creator. What drew you to each of those things and how do they come together to inform one another in your career and life?
TAZ: I was a really shy kid and I never used to leave home much. Thrill-seeking, I used to see it in movies and I thought “Oh that would be cool!” Surfing was the first thing that I did. I remember the first time I got in the water with a surfboard and a wave hit me – it wasn’t even very big but I was little, and I was like “Ahhh!”, and I got out [of the water]. The guy who was teaching me – he was called Juanito, and he’s still my friend today, 15 years later – was like “What are you doing man? Get in!” He grabbed me, put me back on the board, and pushed me out and that changed my life that day. That was the gateway. I got into other scary stuff and I would get angry at being scared. So if I was scared I would be like, “Cool, now there’s no choice, now you gotta do it.” That kind of spiraled and now it’s just a thing that I do.
Writing and acting… well, acting was an accident.
ESQ: A happy one?
TAZ: It was a happy accident! I’m very happy about it! I only like acting when I like the thing I’m acting in; nobody likes acting when they don’t like the thing they’re acting in! So, I only act in things that I like – at least now, I’ve definitely made that choice – and I always like what I’m writing. I want to make films, I want to make shows. Being in them is a cool part of it, but I want to make stuff. In a world where financial security is there, I don’t find much point to life other than leaving a legacy I can be proud of, and I think that can achieved by making stuff.
ESQ: There’s a different joy in filmmaking and writing.
TAZ: Yeah, yeah! You feel resolved in what you’re doing and connected. You have some sort of choice over what it can say or what the outcome can be. One Piece in particular was really cool because Matt and the whole team were really good to us in terms of saying “What do you want to do with it? What do you want to bring to it?” and that’s not always the case. When I do a writer’s room with other writers, my thinking is like: What do you like? Do you want to sit on a chair? A yoga mat? Do you want to bob around on a skateboard? What makes you most creative? Because whatever it is, do that thing. That’s the kind of environment I want to create and be a part of. When a film or show or play has been made in that way, you can feel it, you can feel that it’s been made very rag-tag.
ESQ: On the topic of One Piece, how did you prepare for the role of Sanji – mentally and physically, I know you did all of your own stunts – and with season 2 confirmed, is there anything you learned that will inform or change how you prepare for season 2?
TAZ: Ooh… yeah I did all my own stunts! Part of how I prepared for it… I really went psychopathic on it. Like, let’s throw absolutely everything we possibly can at the wall because we don’t have much to stick right now, we’re starting from zero.
It was 4 hours of training in the morning, then I’d cook a dish we needed to do for the show, repeat that dish over and over again, another 4 hours, then we’d go to the sauna and stretch, they’d pull on my legs and push on my back. That made me improve really quick but what it also did was decimate my legs. I have scar tissue on the inside of my ligaments and it took me about a year to feel like I could land on my legs without pain – I used to duct-tape my legs! I had to be quiet about it so they’d let me do my own stunts.
There was no real way of improving whilst not hurting myself because of how far we needed to go. Whereas for the second season, because I’ve maintained my level and haven’t stopped training ever since– I trained this morning with Iñaki at the UFC gym [in Abu Dhabi]! Iñaki came with me to a kickboxing session and he’s gotten so good at tricking in between the seasons too! So, because we’re kind of at a level that we’ve maintained, the second season for me is about how much quicker I can be. There are not many new kicks or moves to learn, so it’s more about how great we can make those moves. Part of it is going: instead of training 8 hours today, I’m going to train 4 and focus on choreography. Or maybe today I’m just going to do 2 and then stretch, because the less injured everything is, the quicker everything moves.
So for season 2, I want to enjoy it more, and I want to make what we had a lot better… and I want [to do] the party table kick.
ESQ: Was there a specific stunt that was the most difficult to do?
TAZ: Yeah! So there was this one where we jump over a pool, kick the Fishman mid-air, and land on a little rock. And that was all practicals! It was so difficult to do because he was underwater and they had to time pulling him out of the water at the exact same time that I jumped, and landing at the same place so that I could kick, and then there was another wire pull that took him to the other side of the pool. That must’ve taken an hour and a half which doesn’t sound like that much, but we were up against time. I remember thinking: “If we don’t get this, they’re going to cut it. They’re going to cut the stunt and this stunt will never exist.” It was the last take where we just managed it and they all looked at it and went “Cool, we got it! We can keep it!”, and we just started cheering. Isn’t it mad to think that there’s a world in which half an hour would’ve made the difference between it existing and not existing?
ESQ: Now, I must ask… how do you really feel about Oregano?
TAZ: [Laughs] Ha! I love it! I put it on salads! It’s not for savages! It’s nice – have oregano it’s good for you!
ESQ: Who and what are some of your personal influences as an artist?
TAZ: Florian Zeller is my favorite writer. Rappers are my favorite poets. I like old films. Keanu Reeves in Point Break made me want to skydive and surf and jump out of planes. I love Bond. My dad loves Bond, we used to have a box set. I love the way those films are made. I just worked with Martin Campbell who made two of my favorite Bond films.
ESQ: What’s in store for Taz Skylar this year?
TAZ: I’ve got four TV shows in development, with different production companies. One of which is called Seesaw which made a lot of Florian Zeller’s films that I’m really excited about! I don’t have that much time until we go shoot [One Piece] again. There’s a book I’m trying really hard to get the rights to and adapt, so I’m chasing the author about that. I’m going to try and see if I can get all of those things done before I go shoot again.