Stunt casting can work either way for any notable TV series, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any pre-existing of freshly-converted fan of One Piece who wouldn’t want to see Academy Award-winning legend Jamie Lee Curtis tasked to bring Doctor Kureha to life in season 2 and beyond.
The creative team wants the Halloween icon for the role, and she’s made it perfectly clear it’s on her wish-list once the actors’ strike draws to a close, so the chances of it happening are a lot more tangible than the typical fan-casting suggestions that tend to swamp the internet on a near-daily basis.
Speaking to Deadline, co-showrunner Matt Owens opened up on the desire to get Curtis on board, and it’s clear that he’s planning to pull out all of the stops to make it a reality.
“Doctor Kureha, very luckily, is a character who is coming up in our story, and is someone who is perfect for Jamie Lee Curtis. So we tried to start manifesting this dream of ours. After she won her Oscar, the writers room sent her a figure of Doctor Kureha with a nice note that said, “Congratulations on your statue, here’s another one to put next to it. Hope to speak to you soon.
When she reposted that, it got a lot of fan interest, and I commented on it. We’re trying to manifest it. Yes, as of right now, SAG is still striking so there have not been real conversations. But as soon as there can be, I’m ready. I will take her out to dinner, we’ll talk about it. We’ll do all of it because at this point we’re writing for her — we really, really want her to come and play with us in season 2.”
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but it looks as though it’ll be much more of a surprise at this stage if Curtis doesn’t end up as the next major player in the ongoing expansion of One Piece, it’s just up to the studios to pay actors fairly so that Netflix can make it official.