In shifting to Usopp’s perspective, how was it catering to more hardcore ONE PIECE fans who haven’t really seen that change in perspective before?
It was exciting to be able to tell the story where we’re keeping the core of it, but we could get a little fabulous. Using LEGO elements, there’s a lot of fourth-wall breaking and being able to use that to keep things on track; that was the big thing. Usopp is going absurd, but if he’s doing it in front of any of the Straw Hats while telling the story, they will call him out and be like, “That never happened,” and then he’ll either change it back to what did happen or be like, “Well, that’s how I remember it.”
That was what pulled us to it. Jacob Romero is just so fun and really embodies that character, and so to let him cut loose with this new Usopp stuff definitely was also something that we were really looking forward to, because we know he could do such a phenomenal job at it.
Beyond Jacob, you’ve got the main cast reprising their roles for LEGO ONE PIECE, which really underscores how much of an organic extension this is. How was it shaping the story and tone of the special with that in mind?
It honestly made it a lot easier because you know they are all coming in embodying these characters already, so we didn’t have to really find anything. There’s some fine-tuning with the over-the-topness of LEGO humor. It was more just like, “Okay, you know the line. Just make it a little bit bigger, a little bit more ridiculous.”
My hope is that they also had a lot of fun doing this, and, from what I’ve heard when talking to them, they definitely did. It’s like playing the same character, but being able to throw a little different spin on it. It just shows that, yeah, it is part of the larger Netflix ONE PIECE world and the continuity of having Emily Rudd, Iñaki Godoy, Taz Skylar, Mackenyu, and Mikaela Hoover. It definitely de-stressed my whole situation of worrying if they were going to be able to pull this off. As soon as we knew everybody was doing it, it pretty much answered that question, and we could move on to how we were going to make this and write it.
