Taz Skylar on sumo wrestling in Japan and his new Netflix series, One Piece

The strikes in Hollywood last year meant there was no promotion plan for the release of my new TV show One Piece in August. But having worked so hard on the show [a live-action version of the popular manga series] for more than a year in South Africa, my fellow cast mates and I didn’t like to think it would get released while we were all in different places, just staring at our phones to see how it was received. So I pitched the idea to them that we should all go to Japan and spend that day together. It took some arm twisting, but Iñaki Godoy, Jacob Romero, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd and I arrived a few days before the release.

Right before, Iñaki, Jacob and I were walking on a street in Tokyo that had loads of action figures of each of our characters. It was the most surreal experience.

When it aired, we were in a taxi, watching different streamers’ reactions on our phones. We were like, “OK, everyone’s digging it so far…” But then, less than ten minutes in, they all started saying that it had crashed Netflix. Then a YouTuber said there were so many people trying to watch it that the site was overloaded. We were bouncing around the inside of the taxi, going, “We broke Netflix!” We started dancing on the seats.

I experienced so many incredible things during my nine-day Japan trip, including a taekwondo session with someone who was the inspiration for a video-game character in Tekken that I used to play when I was little. I always have something I want to achieve while I’m in a new country. In Japan, I wanted to sumo wrestle with a sumo wrestler, which isn’t something you can easily arrange, but I managed to see a practice session at Miyagino stable in Tokyo. There were easily 20 sumo wrestlers in a space the size of a large living room. Watching the raw power was like watching two tanks collide. You could feel the ground vibrate.

I was chatting through the translator to the head coach, Shō Hakuhō. I was already aware of him, but I wasn’t aware of just how legendary he is across Japan. I asked if I could get in the ring, and he avoided the question for a bit. I’m really into jujitsu now, and I’ve been into taekwondo for a while, so I had a lot of technical questions. One of the sumo wrestlers was close to me, and I said, “Can you show me that thing you’re doing?” He nodded, and then I looked at the coach and he nodded back.

It was going well, and, before I knew it, I’m grabbed at the waist and I’m grabbing someone’s waist, going around in a circle. Then we’re doing leg strengthening and stretching and I’ve got sumo wrestlers pushing on my back. It was so cool. At the end, I turned to the first guy and said, “Dude, can we just do, like, one quick sumo match?” They teed us off, and I was like a little boy. There’s just no moving them, they’re so solid.

One Piece is out on Netflix. Gassed Up is on Amazon Prime