A ‘SURREAL’ RETURN
Cobra Kai creators convince Macchio to revisit his iconic character from The Karate Kid
For anyone of a certain age, having Ralph Macchio sitting across from you discussing The Karate Kid can be a little overwhelming, kind of like having a giant wave of nostalgia crash over you.
Even at the age of 56, the amiable actor still looks impossibly youthful. Believe it or not, 34 years have passed since he first played Daniel LaRusso, the underdog teen who takes karate and life lessons from Mr. Miyagi after moving to California with his single mother and running afoul of rich bullies.
Yes, nostalgia is a powerful thing. Macchio felt it himself last year when filming his first scene in Cobra Kai, the hit web series that has him reprising the role.
It was with actor William Zabka, who returns as LaRusso’s former nemesis Johnny Lawrence. It’s a tense confrontation scene set in Lawrence’s new Dojo, where the one-time bully is intent on bringing the “No Mercy” philosophy of his former sensei John Kreese to new students.
“It’s surreal,” says Macchio, in an interview at the Banff World Media Festival, where he was participating in a master class with Cobra Kai co-creators Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg. “On the one hand, it feels like 100 years ago and on the other hand, it feels like it was yesterday. I don’t know how to explain it more than that. That was the first scene I played with William Zabka. We both had a few more wrinkles, the hairlines have receded a little bit, but it was just like that,” he adds, snapping his fingers. “All that stuff underneath. You had the wisdom and the decades of time but it did not take a lot of ‘How are we going to do this?’ It was really quite wonderful. And it plays nice.”
Cobra Kai, a 10-episode series streaming on YouTube Premium (only four are available in Canada at the moment, but all 10 will be available by the end of the month) has become a runaway hit, a quirky reboot/sequel with an intriguing twist that has audiences viewing the world of Karate Kid from a different perspective. Because the protagonist here, albeit a flawed one, is Lawrence. While LaRusso has become a wildly successful, gladhanding businessman who owns numerous car dealerships in town, Lawrence has become a bitter, underemployed alcoholic estranged from everyone in his life, including his troubled teenage son.
Created by Jon Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald, Cobra Kai debuted in May and its first episode attracted 5.4 million views in 24 hours. A second season is already underway. It is a bonafide hit, but that doesn’t mean everyone was convinced right out of the gate. While Zabka signed on immediately, Macchio proved harder to convince.
Heald worked with Zabka on the raunchy 2010 film Hot Tub Time Machine. But neither he nor Schlossberg and Hurwitz, best known for writing and directing the Harold & Kumar films, had met Macchio before setting up a meeting in New York with the actor.
“We realized we were coming at him with something that he probably, on paper, didn’t want to do,” says Heald, interviewed alongside Schlossberg but separately from Macchio. “He had said no for over 30 years to anything Karate Kid related because he was very comfortable leaving that character and the legacy of that character in the past because there was just too much potential to spoil that legacy, especially as the brand took on more of a comedic tone over the years when it was referenced, whether it was somebody making fun of a crane kick or using the song You’re the Best Around in a comedic way. So when he hears that there are three R-rated comedy screenwriters that are going to come pitch him a Karate Kid TV show, I can’t say he was immediately overwhelmed with the idea.”
Macchio confirms that point. “I was the last guy to the party,” Macchio says with a laugh. “I was a little hesitant, to say the least. Not with their pitch. I didn’t have reservations about what they were saying. I had reservations about going back to that legacy that has become a piece of pop culture around the world. That character is one that I hold dear to me and feel a great responsibility toward.”
So Macchio had a lot of questions. First, since it’s called Cobra Kai, where exactly would Daniel fit in? As much fun it is to flip him into the antagonist of the piece, Macchio wanted to ensure his character maintained his integrity.
He didn’t have to worry. While Cobra Kai’s three creators are best known for irreverent comedy, they are also major fans of the 1984 original film. Heald saw it in the theatre when he was six. When his parents bought a VCR later that year, he demanded the family buy The Karate Kid as their first video. Schlossberg’s cousin taped it off TV and he fell in love with it the first time he watched it. The three creators talked about the movie “all the time.”
This reverence shows in season 1, with numerous references and straight flashbacks from the original film. Still, the three were most intrigued by the idea of exploring the fate of Johnny, the high school bully. What would happen to a guy who peaked in high school only to suffer his biggest humiliation before graduation?
“We loved Johnny Lawrence,” Schlossberg says. “We saw that it wasn’t just us. How I Met Your Mother did a whole character spin on Johnny Lawrence. There’s been a popular YouTube video about whether Daniel LaRusso is the real bully and Johnny the real victim?”
Which is not to say Cobra Kai forwards that particular theory. Macchio, for one, wasn’t interested in playing him as a “rich prick.”
He is no longer the underdog and his success certainly antagonizes Johnny, but he is not a straight antagonist. He may hand out bonsai trees to his customers and star in his own cheesy TV commercials that have him shamelessly referencing his climatic All Valley championship win from the first film, but he is also a fully developed character increasingly disturbed by his own children’s rich-kid sensibilities. He also deeply misses the wisdom-imparting Mr. Miyagi (played in the original film by the late Pat Morita, who earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and died in 2015), which helps deepen the surrogate family themes explored in the original film. Macchio says he was very protective of the “LaRusso-Miyagi side.”
“We would not be doing this show if it were not for Pat Morita’s performance,” Macchio says. “You can say what you want about the crane kick and the Cobra Kai and the high school, but it was the element of his character. It was the father-son element of that film that resonated so much, certainly for me.”