Turns out Jamie Lee Curtis won’t be a part of season two of Netflix’s live-action One Piece after all.
In a recent interview with Deadline, Tomorrow Studios president Becky Clements confirmed that Curtis won’t be a part of the upcoming season of One Piece as Doctor Kureha, despite the back-and-forth social media interaction between her and the showrunners all but confirming her involvement.
“She loves the show. She has too many films and TV shows that she’s going into production on so our production dates aren’t going to work,” Clements told Deadline. “She definitely wanted to do it but she’s got deals in first position, and it just became complicated.”
Curtis has made it no secret that she’s a huge One Piece fan. During a 2016 Q&A segment at San Diego Comic Con, she surprised conventiongoers by revealing that if she were to become any character in TV she’d want to be the Straw Hat’s resident archeologist Nico Robin. Mind you, this was years before Netflix’s Live-Action One Piece series became a thing.
Subsequently, Curtis also said her favorite character is Chopper—a character who would’ve been introduced alongside her had she been cast as Doctor Kureha. This news stings particularly hard for One Piece fans considering showrunner Matt Owens said they were “writing [the character] for her" in a previous Deadline interview.
In lieu of Curtis not being in One Piece Season 2, Clements did confirm that the show has “found an amazing person” for its Kureha.
In other Jamie Lee Curtis news, the scream queen is set to star in the live-action Borderlands film as Dr. Patricia Tannis alongside Jack Black (Claptrap), Kevin Hart (Roland), and Cate Blanchett (Lilith).
In our 6/10 review of One Piece, we said, “Netflix's One Piece is an entertaining adaptation that's hindered by a desire to recreate every major event found in its source material.”
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh
