Mikaela Hoover, who voices the oddly cute but surly Tony Tony Chopper in Netflix's One Piece season 2, says she didn't watch the anime before filming the show. Instead, she chose to put her own spin on the character, with One Piece's showrunner and producers reassuring her that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda would fully approve of her performance.
"I remember after a few sessions saying to [showrunner Joe Tracz] and one of the producers, Steve Welke, 'Should I watch?' And they said, 'Honestly, we love so much what you're doing, you should just keep on this journey. Oda-san picked you for a reason'," Hoover tells THR. Indeed, Oda helped guide Tony Tony Chopper into the live action show, offering up is own advice on how to portray him.
"Now, after filming season two, I have seen some of the anime in Japanese, and the actress is absolutely brilliant, but we're very different, and I think that to copy the anime would have been a disservice," Hoover continues. "I'm sure fans are going to feel a certain way, but I had to let all of that go and just trust my interpretation and trust the work - trust that this is how Oda wanted him portrayed."
Despite not having seen the anime, Hoover says she connected deeply with Tony Tony Chopper, who is essentially a cute little reindeer guy with a kinda tortured soul, who sometimes turns into a huge monster.
"At the end of the day, he just really wants to be accepted," she explains. "I've also experienced not feeling seen, somebody loving you, and then turning their back on you. I feel so connected to him in those ways that it was easy to pull from my own experiences when I embody him. I feel like I'm healing some childhood wounds in myself."
All episodes of One Piece season 2 are streaming now on Netflix. For more, check out our One Piece season 2 review, or, check out our list of the best new anime shows you need to know about.
