The crazy clown pirate Buggy is undoubtedly one of THE scene-stealers in the “One Piece” live-action series on Netflix. He is played by Jeff Ward, who gained fame primarily through the first MCU series.
On their way to becoming a crew and setting off in the direction of the Grandline, the budding Straw Hat gang of up-and-coming pirate Monkey D. Ruffy (Iñaki Godoy) encounters a number of adversaries in the first “One Piece” season. As in the manga and the anime adaptation, one antagonist in particular remains in the memory alongside the later chief villain Arlong (McKinley Belcher III): clown pirate Buggy (Jeff Ward), something like the buccaneer answer to the Joker – with body parts that he can separate at will.
If you’ve been wondering what the actor behind the clown outfit looks like without any make-up, we recommend you take a detour from Netflix to Disney+. There, Buggy actor Jeff Ward can be seen in his most famous role to date: as one of the titular “Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” in the Marvel series of the same name.
Not quite so crazy
In “Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Jeff Ward played the windy but kind-hearted Deke Shaw from season 5 onwards, who meets the familiar main characters as a survivalist on a space station mercilessly controlled by the Kree in the future of the year 2091 and then later lands in their present, where he ultimately joins S.H.I.E.L.D..
While he still had a (larger) supporting role in season 5, he was promoted to the main cast in season 6, to which he then also belonged in the final seventh season – even though he was initially intended for a completely different role that was to die right at the beginning of the fifth season. Ward, however, so won over the rest of the cast and those behind the series that they ultimately cast him as Deke.
MCU OR NOT MCU – THAT IS THE QUESTION HERE
Jeff Ward was thus already part of a big and mega-popular franchise before “One Piece”, even if “Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” can’t really be counted as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe anymore. Yet on paper the series, which started in 2013, is/was actually set in the MCU (which, strictly speaking, even made it the very first MCU series).
Not only is the agent squad led by the familiar (and revived) Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) from the first MCU phase (who even gets a visit from Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury), but the first seasons also make strong references to the events from the movies – until they said goodbye to this in season 6, where the previously teased arrival of Thanos on Earth (see “Avengers: Infinity War”) suddenly played no role at all. Conversely, “Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” has always been ignored by the cinema MCU anyway (just like the Netflix series about the Defenders, by the way). The first real MCU series that is also relevant to the big screen adventures is therefore actually only “WandaVision” from 2021.
WILL BUGGY RETURN IN “ONE PIECE” SEASON 2?
It is therefore not very likely that we will see Jeff Ward again one day as Deke Shaw in the MCU proper. But if you want to see the 36-year-old in another series role without the clown look, without having to fight your way through four seasons without him, there are the Netflix series “Brand New Cherry Flavor” and the second season of the horror anthology series “Channel Zero”, in which Ward also has central parts.
Otherwise, he will almost certainly be back as Buggy in the already confirmed second season of “One Piece” (to get in the mood for the comeback, we recommend this behind-the-scenes video of Ward’s Buggy transformation).
