The One Piece mania now seems unstoppable: the Netflix live action is achieving dizzying numbers and is still among the most watched products in this period. With this adaptation of the manga by Eiichiro Oda the streaming giant hit the mark, creating a product capable of conquering both newbies and fans who have consistently followed the manga or animated TV series. Fun, full of action and heart, One Piece it’s the big hit Netflix needed. The TV series is giving great popularity to the protagonist actors, who played the members of the Straw Hat crew on the screen. The live action of the manga by Eiichiro Oda for example, it changed the life of the young interpreter of Nami, Emily Rudd.
Now the actress has become very popular thanks to One Piecebut at the beginning of her career it wasn’t easy for her to break through.
In an interview given to Collider Emily Rudd she recalled how at the beginning things weren’t rosy for her. She said that in 2013, while she was living in Los Angeles and trying to make it as an actress, she worked two jobs to support herself because her acting didn’t allow her to support herself. When she was offered to star in a music video, he was thinking of refusing because the pay was poor and because he would have to work at night. In the end her family forced her to accept the job and this opportunity paved the way for her:
“A music video was the first project I took part in as an actress here in Los Angeles. At the time I was working two jobs to support myself and had to work the next day. It was a night shot. I think I was paid about $100 for 12 hours of work overnight. And I was about to refuse, but my family said, ‘You went to Los Angeles to act. Just do it! You can sleep when you’re dead!’ And so I did, and from there the director was impressed and called me for a bunch of other projects. The casting director had me act in a bunch of other music videos and then it became my thing. (…) It was a fun way to continue doing what I loved and save some money. In the end it was a lot of fun. It wasn’t what I expected, but I liked it.”
The experience in music videos proved to be particularly fruitful, because it gave her the opportunity to gain confidence in front of the camera. Emily Rudd, in fact, had only acted in the theater and had never appeared on TV or in the cinema. The actress of One Piece has explained:
“I didn’t come from a film and television background. I grew up in a small town that was between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and I had only had some experience in the theater. And so I wasn’t familiar with the camera at all and that was a wonderful way to immerse myself in that world, to get comfortable, to understand how things work on sets. In this way, when I got more opportunities in film and television, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not completely out of my league.’