Everyone has been looking forward to the second season of ‘Cobra Kai’ and HollywoodLife got to talk EXCLUSIVELY with cast members about John Kreese’s big return, Daniel’s Miyagi-Do training school, and more.
Cobra Kai season 2 is now streaming on YouTube Premium. The end of the mega-popular first season ended with the shocking return of John Kreese. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Martin Kove, William Zabka, and Ralph Macchio about the highly-anticipated second season. William teased that Johnny and Kreese’s dynamic going forward is going to be even more complicated. “Johnny and Kreese have a very love-hate relationship, a very father-son dysfunctional relationship,” William told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY at The Paley Center for Media’s Cobra Kai: Season Two Premiere Screening & Conversation. “Kreese is the man who built Johnny Lawrence, so for him to step back into his life and to his dojo that Kreese created. There is a lot of tension and love between these two characters and they have different philosophies of the teaching between them both. So it’s been awesome to explore that in the show.”
For Martin, getting back into the character of Kreese took some time because he wanted this version of Kreese to be fresh and honest. “It took time to get dark because I didn’t want to play this guy stoic and stiff,” Martin said. “It wasn’t interesting to me. I had just finished the Tarantino movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and I was really feeling good and I didn’t want to go backward and do something I did 30 years ago, but they wrote it with such texture and so much vulnerability. He is still a son of a b*tch! He is still as tough as nails! But it’s not based on him being evil but it’s based on him never wanting to lose no matter what! It was an indoctrination from Vietnam.”
In addition to the tension between Kreese and Johnny, Daniel is also opening up his own Miyagi-Do training school in honor of his mentor, Mr. Miyagi. However, this training school won’t come without its own complications. “It seems like a no brainer for Daniel to open up Miyagi-Do and spread the legacy and the teachings of Mr. Miyagi and show what he considers is a better way! As he gets into it, he realizes that it is not as easy as it seems,” Ralph told HollywoodLife. “It’s not just because he doesn’t have knowledge of his subjects. And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to teach it. He doesn’t have the Miyagi touch and actually has to take some lumps along the way. In the end, he has to find his own way of teaching and it is not always that easy. It puts a strain on his life and work and his marriage. Now he has to fix that! All those hurdles are great.”