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In an exclusive video interview with OPFandom.com, I spoke to Steven John Ward, the actor for Mihawk in Netflix’s recent One Piece live-action. Hailing from South Africa, Steven spoke about his journey of acting from the age of 8 and how an audition called “Project Panda,” changed his life.
From training with master sword fighters to traveling around the world for conventions, it has been a whirlwind of a ride for him since landing such an iconic anime role.
As someone who started to focus more on casting recently in South Africa, Steven was hesitant to audition for the project that seemed to reference the enigmatic Pandaman from One Piece. With some encouragement, though, he jumped on the opportunity. Assuming it was for an anime adaptation, he was concerned about it being another Dragonball live-action disaster. When he got the part and discovered it was for one of the biggest anime out there, he started to feel the pressure. “This is going to make or break my career,” Ward said.
He immediately started working out to get those Mihawk abs and muscles. Exercise took about half a year before he was properly in shape. He was able to get inspiration for the character after watching a lot of John Gremillion’s work, the English voice actor for Dracule Mihawk.
Steven also took inspiration for the character’s demeanor and accent from the voice of Scar, Jeremy Irons, in Disney’s “The Lion King.”
After sword training with expert Koji Kawamoto and working with Mackenyu (Zoro), Ward went from fumbling as a sword wielder to mastering the scenes wielding his sword Yoru on screen. He talks about how accomplished Mackenyu is and the insane accuracy and command that the Zoro actor has with swords.
Since the live action was filmed in South Africa and made use of its many actors and crew, I was curious to know about how One Piece would change the landscape for this country’s film and TV industries with Steven applauding the many positive impacts. I mentioned that Netflix and One Piece has created more opportunities for South African actors and crew members, helping to pave the way to showcase more of their talents to the world.
Steven got to spend a lot of time with several co-workers from Taz Skylar (Sanji) to Emily Rudd (Nami) to even Iñaki’s (Luffy’s) mother. Iñaki’s mom was apparently always there with a “basket of amazing goodies” for everyone. He commented on how dedicated and invested the acting and production team were. “We’re not here for fame. We are here to make good content,” Ward remarks.
When asked about the One Piece community, he said that “One Piece fans are pretty respectful.” He speaks about his love for going to conventions. “Fans are the reason I have a career,” Steven remarks.
Ward not only wants to give back to the fans but to see and buy from the local vendors and fanboy over meeting people like voice actor Dan Green of Yu-Gi-Oh. His motto has been to make at least one person smile a day, so he can do a lot of this at these cons.
With the news that Oda had made them reshoot some scenes, Stephen did mention he had to return to set a month later when he thought he was finished with Season 1 shooting. When on set, Ward said, “You felt like Oda was there,” because he relayed so much to the production team so often.
His message to OPFandom.com readers and their sibling Facebook group, One Piece – Two Million Fans: “Thanks for giving the live-action a shot,” and “thanks for believing in Oda, because at the end of the day, this was his baby and still is.”
He is most happy about how fans who never watched or read One Piece, watched the live-action and then got into the anime and manga.
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