17 minute read
Streaming sensations: We sit down
from Shimbun #5
SCREEN SENSEI
In a Shimbun exclusive, we meet the creative champions behind the cameras of Cobra Kai
GIVEN there is plenty of truth in the old adage that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, tinkering with treasured characters and a movie franchise that has become a cinematic rite of passage for millions could so easily have been career suicide for the creators of Cobra Kai.
There will certainly have been many who winced when they first heard the news that Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg — the comedic minds behind Harold & Kumar — were teaming up with Hot Tub Time Machine writer Josh Heald to spin The Karate Kid into a new narrative for YouTube Originals in 2018.
History, a switch to Netflix and in excess of 73 million viewers to date has, of course, emphatically demonstrated that any fears over tarnished legacies were woefully misplaced.
However, had the sceptics spent even the merest of moments in the company of Jon, Hayden and Josh, they would have known that The Karate Kid’s heritage was in the safest possible hands without the need to watch a single second of the streaming sensation.
As Shimbun discovered when we sat down to talk Cobra Kai, Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang with the trio, they care too much about all-things All Valley to make a martial arts misstep.
Streaming superstars: The creative talent and Karate Kid super fans behind Netflix’s hit show Cobra Kai – (from left to right) Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.
Jon: The idea of Cobra Kai as a concept first came up about 18 years ago. For the three of us, the seeds were our separate but joint love for The Karate Kid and William Zabka. It was a fascination with his career and the fact he was consistently known as the bad guy in high school movies. We knew common bullies in our own world and as we got older we talked about why someone was a bully and where they had come from, which got us fascinated with doing a show that examined the most iconic bully of our lifetime.
We were in our early 20s, Hayden and I were living together in Los Angeles having sold our first screenplay and Josh lived a block away. The three of us used to gather every night and watch The Karate Kid special edition DVD, which had a feature interview with William where he was talking about his approach to playing Johnny. He said he viewed him as just another kid in the high school who had his own issues going on and his own life, a girlfriend that he loved and this other kid comes to town and gets involved — and the rest is history.
Josh: The original film had a huge impact on me. I was six-years-old and remember vividly it being one of the first movies I went to the theatre to see. Karate Kid was vibrant and technicolour, and I can still picture the experience to this day. It helped that I was from New Jersey and it was about a kid from New Jersey who goes on this journey. It felt special at the time and it was not surprising that it became timeless. I gobbled up the next two movies but throughout my life I kept coming back to the original. It was one that I held on to for nostalgia. I had my VHS and it was The Karate Kid and Back to the Future that I dragged around with me when I went off to college and when I got my first apartment. As the box of videos dwindled and I had to make choices of what to get rid of, The Karate Kid never left. All three of us made that journey as Jersey kids to Los Angeles. Jon and I both married girls who were born in LA. Growing up, my wife lived down the street from where Ali’s house was and it turns out she also had a real affinity for the movie. There were constantly things like that in my life, and I know Jon and Hayden’s life as well, that kept calling back to The Karate Kid.
Jon and Hayden knew each other from high school and I met them both in our freshman year of college. Our joint passion for the movie drew us together.
It was just this ongoing discussion between the three of us — continuously breaking down the movie and finding new gems to talk about; it was like a treasure hunt. There were just always new and special things that took us on a nostalgic journey back to our youth when we were just six years old watching Mr Miyagi on the beach for the first time doing the crane kick. It is like a drug, you are chasing that experience.
From left: Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and William Zabka Picture: CURTIS BONDS BAKER/NETFLIX © 2020
Q: How hard was it to convince members of the original cast to reprise their roles?
Josh: There were degrees of arm twisting when it came to the actors. We went to William first because I worked with him on Hot Tub Time Machine and knew that he had been followed by Johnny’s ghost his whole life. There was definitely a desire in his head to exorcise the demon of Johnny in some sort of way. He and I kicked around trying to find something that was Johnny Lawrence-esque for him to play but it always felt a bit unauthentic because it wasn’t The Karate Kid. As soon as we knew
this was a possibility we took him to lunch and let him unwrap the present.
Ralph was far more at arm’s length about wanting to step into the role of Daniel LaRusso ever again. He had a tremendous experience before in the role and felt the legacy was secure. He believed there was a lot of risk in taking the artefact out of the protective cover and playing with it again. We flew to New York to take him to lunch with our passion on our sleeves and ended up having this amazing fourhour meeting in an empty restaurant taking him through the whole of season one. He had lots of questions but we had answers to all of them and we weren’t making it up because we had thought about this character and the story for a long time. He latched on to that and loved the idea of exploring Daniel in a totally different way to before.
Martin Kove (pages 18-23) was a performer who would have bashed through a wall to come into this show in episode one if we had chosen to write it that way. We led with open arms and said it was going to be really difficult but we need you to stay on the sidelines for nine episodes because your entrance is a pivotal and significant moment; we want to use you as the season one cliffhanger.
He appreciated that, but as an actor who was seeing Ralph and William go off to don their gi and play these characters again, he was feeling like the kid who wasn’t invited to the party. Once he stepped in he was incredible and it was great to have the gang back together.
Q: How delighted are you that those core cast members have proved such a revelation on screen after all this time?
Hayden: We are thrilled. It starts with William and Ralph but everybody who has come back on the show has been amazing. The moment we did the first chemistry read and William yelled “quiet” for the first time we knew the whole show was going to work.
Beyond that, from the original Cobras in season two to Kumiko and Chozen in season three, all of the actors have been phenomenal, slipping back into those roles like they never left them. We expected Elisabeth Shue to make us fall in love with Ali all over again and she did instantaneously. It has been really fun seeing all of these actors that we loved so much growing up in our own universe.
Elisabeth Shue and Josh Heald Picture: CURTIS BONDS BAKER/NETFLIX © 2020
Q: Kreese’s comeback has proved a particular highlight. What’s it like being in the company of a legendary villain?
Jon: Martin Kove is a joy to work with, he loved the character Sensei Kreese and he loved the character passionately before we came to him with Cobra Kai. This is a man who has attended many comic cons over the last decade and he is the perfect guy there. He has such self-awareness and a sense of humour about the character as well. He is a really funny guy, a loving father and a great friend. Every speech that he has on the show and every moment is so carefully constructed because we know how he is going to deliver it. We know the energy that he is going to bring and how powerful it is.
Josh: In the first movies he was there to be Darth Vader. He was there to have this wrong type of idea of what karate is and how it should be used as a weapon, inside the dojo or out on the street. Bringing Kreese back we get all of that baggage. The more questions we ask
about Kreese the more you start to appreciate that there can be a richer story to tell about that character — it doesn’t need to forgive him, but it can provide moments of empathy.
Q: Cobra Kai challenges viewers’ perceptions of classic characters — was part of the plan to switch heroes?
Jon: It was never the intent to make it that Daniel was the villain. Our opinion as people who watched The Karate Kid was that Johnny was in the wrong with a lot of things he did in that story and Daniel was the hero. We didn’t know the whole picture of what was going on in Johnny’s life though and that is the point of Cobra Kai. To be able to examine Johnny and Daniel and have a full picture of both of their lives. Even if someone is an antagonist in your life they may be the hero of their own journey and the hero may be the antagonist in their journey. It is really about trying to understand one another as opposed to looking at things in a black and white way.
What also excited us was the idea of being able to create a whole new generation of characters that young people and audiences of all kinds can fall in love with in the same way we did with the originals. To be able to tell many stories within this universe became very exciting to us.
Q: Was there any trepidation about meddling with the past?
Josh: The most important thing was making sure that we didn’t tarnish the reputation of the franchise. We wanted it to feel like Cobra Kai was an extension of the story. That was a big portion of our pitch to networks and streamers. We had to make sure we weren’t going out to prove that we were the biggest fans of The Karate Kid and have 7,000 references to the movie in every episode. It had to feel earned, and it had to have the same universal evergreen themes of the first movie but it couldn’t be done in the same way. We haven’t done anything except eat, sleep, write and direct Cobra Kai since the project began. When we make the show we live together, and when we aren’t we are always texting each other ideas. It is a conversation that never stops. What we have accomplished and seeing the reaction of the fans since day one has been great.
Q: How hard was it to supplement the familiar faces with new characters?
Josh: It was tremendously important that the show worked for an audience that had never seen The Karate Kid. The most important part was putting together the new cast and making sure they fit with the tone and tenor of the franchise but also felt contemporary.
It was an exhaustive search and I have to say it has been a pleasure to watch these performers grow up on the show. It has been great watching them get into the history of it and discover the things that are special about this franchise. It is really quite special to work with each and every one of them.
Q: Was it a prerequisite that they had any fighting experience?
Hayden: That was not the prime thing we were looking for. It was a consideration. We knew when we were auditioning for the character of Miguel that we needed to find somebody that would be believable as someone who could be getting bullied in school but also have enough skill to become the champion of a karate tournament. It is always a positive if they have martial arts skills but acting took precedence.
Over time our younger actors are just getting better and better as they rehearse and train and practise with our stunt coordinators. If they have the ability to do it you can make them good enough. We are not asking them to fight, we are asking them to learn the patterns and the choreography. At the end of the day, you just want people who are excited about that aspect of the role and are willing to go 110 per cent because if they do that then it really makes you feel like that character is doing that same kind of magic that you loved in the original movie.
Jon: We immediately hired Hiro Koda, who was obsessed with The Karate Kid and whose father was his sensei and taught him many disciplines of martial arts. He was already an Emmy-nominated stunt coordinator before doing our show and we were able to speak to him and talk about the philosophies of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do. He is basically our translator. Anything that we write he is able to communicate with us how to do it in the most authentic way possible.
Picture: Guy D’Alema
Q: How much of the Cobra Kai universe have you mapped out?
Jon: When we started filming the show we knew the entire first season arcs in pretty clear detail. For season two, three and beyond, many of the ideas were concepts we had in our head but we didn’t know where they were going to end up.
We have had a clear sense of the endgame from the beginning, and have said many times that we don’t know how many seasons we are going to end up doing but we know how we’d like it to end. The story is fluid in certain ways. It has been fun each season finding ways to expand the universe, introducing new characters that we didn’t know we were
going to create early on. Tory, for example, is someone we didn’t know would become a big part.
Q: How significant has the Netflix effect been in taking the show to the next level?
Jon: When we conceived the show it was always intended in our minds that we would sell it to Netflix. For the first two years while it was on YouTube it was exciting to hear the reviews and the people who saw it loved it, but most people that we knew hadn’t seen it. As soon as we made the move in 2020 the rise was instantaneous. The reaction has been mind-blowing for us especially as the series moved over to Netflix during such a difficult time in the world. To have people reaching out and telling us how it brought joy to them in a tough period was something that was very unexpected. That was the thing we have enjoyed the most because it is making people smile and has allowed them an opportunity to forget about the problems in the world for a number of hours.
Q: With filming of season four now under way do you feel as motivated as before?
Josh: We are even more enthusiastic because it is proof of concept. Nothing was more enjoyable than seeing the audience out there find the show and react to it the way that they have. We suspected that we weren’t these three crazy people who were the only ones on Earth who cared about these characters and the story, but what we found is that there are many others like us.
We know that the audience is waiting and is going to want us to deliver more on the premise that we have set out and expand the universe. Our audience is very savvy — they have seen what we have been doing now for 30 episodes. It is a challenge to tell something new that catches them off guard and takes them to places that they don’t expect.
Season three was explosive, it was our biggest season so far. Knowing that people are going to be there on day one to binge this show once again, charges us to make that binge worthwhile. It is a really gratifying position to be in and one we are grateful for.
Q: Can we expect to one day see an Eagle Fang spin-off?
Hayden: Anything is possible. I think our hope is that by the time our series reaches its exciting, fulfilling and awesome conclusion that we have expanded this universe and have a fanbase that wants to see more. As hardcore fans of The Karate Kid you can rest assured that we are hardcore fans of the characters in Cobra Kai and we think a lot about things like spin-offs and sequels and movie versions of characters. There are no official plans for anything yet, we are focused on Cobra Kai season four, but we are dreamers and we like to fantasise about all the different things you can do with a successful show. We will see if it ends up happening but that is one of the fun things we like to talk about when we are hanging out in-between seasons. Q: The Karate Kid inspired thousands to take up martial arts. Were any of you among them?
Hayden: No. I loved the idea of being able to use this skill to take on people that are bigger and stronger, but it required spending time after school not watching TV and playing video games and at the time I was a couch potato. I was watching The Karate Kid and fantasising about it when I probably should have been putting on a gi and going to a dojo.
The same is true with Jon and Josh. We are all sports fans and I think there is something about an underdog story that gets us riled up. We didn’t have the direct threat that Daniel LaRusso was facing so we could afford to play video games.
We knew the impact it had on the sport and it does provide tremendous value even if you don’t end up in a fight. Before we started shooting Cobra Kai we thought we should join a dojo, put a gi on and get a feeling of the mat but it just didn’t happen because we had too much work to do.
Q: Are you aware Cobra Kai is having a similar effect and is helping to invigorate karate?
Hayden: We knew that The Karate Kid launched the sport in a major way all throughout the world and made it really accessible to children in a way that nobody had seen before. The idea that is happening again is really good. Even though we are not karate students ourselves, we truly believe that there is something that you can take from it that is not just learning a skill, not just learning how to fight. We think that there is a method to the madness of The Karate Kid and there is a magic that is worth pursuing. We just hope that the kids and new students that are coming to karate do not show “no mercy” on the world.
