Netflix adds four to One Piece: The Battle of Alabasta as production wraps in Cape Town
Netflix has added four actors to the third season of its live-action One Piece series, subtitled The Battle of Alabasta, announcing the castings during the One Piece Day stage show in Tokyo on Sunday Deadline.
Emilio Sakraya will play Koza, Omid Abtahi takes on Toto, Jamie Ward steps in as Pell, and Nabeel Khan joins as Chaka. All four are characters drawn from the Alabasta story arc of Eiichiro Oda's manga, which the new season adapts.
Production on The Battle of Alabasta has already wrapped, with filming having taken place in Cape Town, South Africa. The series has used South Africa as its production base across its run.
The returning cast is large. Iñaki Godoy leads as Monkey D. Luffy, with Mackenyu as Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero as Usopp, and Taz Skylar as Sanji — the core Straw Hat crew since Season 1. Also back are Charithra Chandran as Miss Wednesday, Mikaela Hoover as Chopper, Joe Manganiello as Mr. 0, Lera Abova as Miss All Sunday, and Sendhil Ramamurthy as Nefertari Cobra.
Four new additions had already been announced before this weekend. Cole Escola is cast as Bon Clay, Xolo Maridueña as Portgas D. Ace, Daisy Head as Miss Doublefinger, and Awdo Awdo as Mr. 1.
Season 3 follows the Straw Hats entering the Grand Line — the manga's vast, dangerous ocean route — and getting caught in a civil war in the desert kingdom of Alabasta, engineered by the villain Sir Crocodile and his Baroque Works syndicate. The arc is one of the most celebrated stretches in the long-running One Piece manga, which Oda began serialising in 1997.
Behind the camera, Joe Tracz and Ian Stokes serve as co-showrunners, writers and executive producers. The executive producer roster also includes Oda himself, along with Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements through Tomorrow Studios, Tetsu Fujimura, Chris Symes, Christoph Schrewe, and Steven Maeda.
For fans, the four new castings fill out the last major roles in the Alabasta ensemble, completing a picture that has been assembling piece by piece across multiple casting waves. With production wrapped and a full cast in place, the season now moves into post-production, where visual effects and editing will shape the desert kingdom before Netflix sets a release date.
