Cobra Kai (TV Program)

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    Ralph Macchio on Getting In His Final Kicks in ‘Cobra Kai’

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    When Ralph Macchio was first approached about doing a “Karate Kid” series about the adult lives of Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, he was skeptical.“I was like, ‘I’m a car salesman?’” said Macchio, who starred in the original 1984 film as Daniel, a teenage transplant to Southern California, who learns karate and defeats his bully, Johnny (William Zabka), on the mat.“They didn’t have me at hello,” he said.But at a meeting that lasted over three hours in the courtyard of the Greenwich Hotel, in Lower Manhattan, the creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg won him over with their vision for that series, “Cobra Kai.” It wasn’t only a nostalgia play. It also looked to introduce a whole new generation of karate kids.“As they started talking about the younger characters — Miguel, Samantha, that next generation — and the parenting part,” Macchio said, “I started leaning forward.”Now, six seasons later, “Cobra Kai,” which is set in the San Fernando Valley approximately 30 years after the events of “The Karate Kid,” will release its final five episodes on Netflix on Thursday. The series, which stars Macchio and Zabka, puts a new lens on Johnny, who begins as a deadbeat dad, haunted by his fall from grace in the 1980s, but finds new purpose in reopening the Cobra Kai dojo and reigniting his rivalry with Daniel.Macchio in the sixth and final season of “Cobra Kai.” “It ends in a way that has all those ’80s movie feels and cheers and tears, and yet sees it through a ‘Cobra Kai’ kind of lens,” Macchio said.Curtis Bonds Baker/NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ralph Macchio Will Always Be ‘The Karate Kid.’ He’s Finally Fine With That.

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      His new memoir, “Waxing On,” sees the ’80s star making peace with the role that has brought him back into circulation thanks to “Cobra Kai.”Playing Daniel LaRusso in “The Karate Kid” made Ralph Macchio famous for life. For decades, people have been telling him where they were when they saw the 1984 popcorn flick or how its underdog story affected them.Such all-encompassing fame, however, came with a downside.As he tried to move on in his acting career, he couldn’t quite leave the role behind. Sometimes, he said, he even felt stifled by it, no longer the freewheeling but vulnerable 22-year-old whose character in the movie learned the importance of balance, in life and in martial arts.Nearly four decades later, he has written a memoir, “Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me,” about the making of the movie, and how it has shaped — and continues to shape — his life.The book is reassuringly free of scandal or self-destructive behavior, but there’s a palpable ambivalence that runs through its 241 pages, though ultimately the tone bends toward optimism.Macchio as Daniel LaRusso in the first film, a hit that spawned two sequels.Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionHaving wrapped his fifth season reprising the role in “Cobra Kai,” Netflix’s surprisingly popular sequel series, Macchio seems to have made peace with, and even embraced, what he calls “the wonderful gift.”Looking back, he writes, the original film is “a prime example of when Hollywood gets it all right. It teaches and inspires through pure entertainment.”On a sunny rooftop terrace in Lower Manhattan one recent morning, Macchio — a not at all 60-looking 60, even with his sunglasses off — displayed the natural relatability that has been a hallmark of his career. It’s something he shares with Daniel LaRusso, “the every-kid next door,” he explained, who “had no business winning anything.”Growing up on Long Island, Macchio would watch MGM movie musicals with his mom. Soon enough, he was taking tap-dancing lessons in between Little League games and working Saturdays with his dad. (His brother took more to the family laundromat and pump-truck businesses.)Along with roles in school plays and dance recitals, Macchio started auditioning for commercials, leading to two Bubble Yum spots. After his first movie, “Up the Academy,” and a one-season stint on ABC’s “Eight Is Enough,” he landed the career-changing role of the “lost puppy” Johnny Cade, opposite his fellow teen idols C. Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon, in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders.”Back home, Macchio, then 21, got called for another audition. The screenplay was based on an article about a bullied kid who learned martial arts for self-defense. It was set to be directed by John G. Avildsen, who had made the underdog classic “Rocky.”“I recall connecting to the father-and-son elements and heart in the story right off the bat,” Macchio writes of his first reading of the screenplay. But he “found some of the high school story line characters a bit corny and stereotyped.”One other thing bothered him: the title. He thought it sounded ridiculous. “I mean, can you imagine?” he writes. “If I ever did get this part and the movie hit, I would have to carry this label for the rest of my life!”Macchio, right, with C. Thomas Howell in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film “The Outsiders.”Warner Home VideoTo Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote the movie’s screenplay, Macchio was the natural choice: He mixed a “pugnacious attitude” with emotional vulnerability.“He was sharp. He was smart,” Kamen said in a phone interview. “And if he got in a fight, he had nothing to back it up but being a wise guy. It was exactly who the character was.”Then the ’80s started tilting toward the ’90s. Macchio felt he was aging out of the character, but the character wasn’t aging out of him — at least as far as the entertainment industry was concerned.In 1986, with “The Karate Kid Part II” in theaters and a third movie on the horizon, Macchio got a chance to stretch, as the struggling son of the drug dealer played by Robert De Niro in the Broadway drama “Cuba and His Teddy Bear.”“It was all moving pretty fast,” he recalled in the interview. “I just wish I soaked it in a little more. Here I am, toe to toe with De Niro every night.”In a phone interview, De Niro said he admired Macchio’s levelheadedness and work ethic. It was “easy to like him personally, and then also relate to him in what we were doing,” he said. “We had something already to work off.”Macchio with Burt Young, left, and Robert DeNiro in a scene from the play “Cuba and His Teddy Bear.”Martha Swope/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsBut behind the scenes, Macchio’s personal frustrations were mounting — moments that are among the book’s most revealing.One night the famed film director Sidney Lumet was in the audience. Backstage after the performance, Lumet said he was planning a film to be called “Running on Empty,” and was interested in him playing “a significant role” in it, Macchio recalls in the book.The problem was that the time Lumet was slated to shoot “Running on Empty” for one studio directly conflicted with the production schedule for “The Karate Kid Part III” at another.“The ‘Running on Empty’ ship was set to sail,” Macchio writes, “and I was consigned back to my original port of call.” (River Phoenix was nominated for an Oscar in the part.)On another night, Warren Beatty was the surprise visitor to Macchio’s dressing room. The young actor shared his frustrations; Beatty counseled him, suggesting he find balance between his commercial successes and his other ambitions. “Don’t look down on those movies,” Macchio writes, recalling what Beatty said. “You need that as much as you want this (meaning the De Niro play).”One bright spot was his being cast in 1992’s “My Cousin Vinny,” alongside Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei. Macchio’s daughter was born that same year, and his son would arrive three years later.In “Cobra Kai,” Macchio plays a grown Daniel LaRusso, who meets up again with a former nemesis, portrayed by Yuji Okumoto.NetflixStill, he writes of the ’90s, when “planning the growth of our family on Long Island … my career had little to no growth of its own. The future was looming and unknown, and the unknown was daunting to me.”His agents floated the idea of doing a television series, but the development deal only led to a few episodes, never to be aired. Macchio then turned to making short films and writing screenplays.“I would draw from the lessons that I had learned from the Avildsens and Coppolas of the world,” he writes. “I kept myself creatively fulfilled and thriving during those leaner acting years. I was finding the balance in work and family.”Then, in 2018, came “Cobra Kai,” the vision of the creators Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg.Macchio would play Daniel LaRusso once again, except this time he’d be a middle-aged family man, though still open to a rivalry with Johnny Lawrence and the Cobra Kai dojo, albeit one with a bit more complexity this time.Signing Macchio on took some persuading.“I understood where I fit in the construct of ‘Cobra Kai’ and the storytelling,” he said. “If the show bombed and tanked, I’d probably say, you know, I was right. I was worried about that. … But everything happened right.”“The future was looming and unknown, and the unknown was daunting to me,” Macchio writes of his post- “Karate Kid” fortunes. Nearly three decades later came “Cobra Kai.”Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesThe new series, he said, understands what made “The Karate Kid” such a favorite: “Fathers and sons, bullying, redemption, overcoming the obstacles, finding your way, falling forward, skinning your knees, scraping your hands, getting up, figuring it out.”In the book, Macchio acknowledges that in “Cobra Kai” “the tone at times is different,” but “a common ground it shares with the movie is in its heart.” It’s that kind of emotional openness the screenwriter, Kamen, saw in the actor decades ago. After the interview was over, Macchio stepped into the elevator, heading to the building’s lobby. Others got in as well. One recognized him, and asked for a picture.“I’m just the elevator guy,” he said, with a grin. More

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      For a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveFor a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix‘I have a hard time saying no to a basket,’ said the actor Courtney Henggeler, explaining her approach to decorating her family’s Long Island rental.Courtney Henggeler’s Evolving Aesthetic13 PhotosView Slide Show ›Adam Macchia for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSmart mothers know better than to bring their young children on trips to the grocery store. The little ones tend to lobby vigorously for things that, in the end, will benefit no one but the family dentist. And they probe, at high volume, matters that Mommy may not want to discuss in public.Courtney Henggeler can speak with some authority on this topic. Not long ago, she was wheeling her cart through the supermarket when her 4-year-old son, Oscar, loudly asked, “Why do we have so many houses?”“People who were listening must have thought we were very wealthy,” said Ms. Henggeler, 42, who co-stars in the hit Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” a spinoff of 1984’s “The Karate Kid.” (She also appeared on “The Big Bang Theory” as Sheldon’s twin sister, and had a recurring role in the first few seasons of “Mom.”) “It’s just that we move around. I film ‘Cobra Kai’ in Atlanta, and we were in a house for three months one year, and the next year we were in another house.”Oscar may be relieved to know that his family — until recently based in Los Angeles, also in a series of rentals — is zeroing in on a permanent address. A year or so ago, Ms. Henggeler, who grew up in the Poconos and in Seaford, Long Island, and her husband, Ross Kohn, a movie producer who was raised in Westchester, decided to move back to New York and settle there to be closer to Ms. Henggeler’s ailing mother.The plan: to rent for a few years and then build their dream house.Courtney Henggeler, 42, one of the stars of the Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” lives with her family in a rented house in Huntington, N.Y. “I love the doors, I love the moldings, I love the big windows,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesCourtney Henggeler, 42Occupation: ActorIn the pink: “It was very important to me to have a soft-pink bedroom for my daughter. Poor kid. She’s probably, like, ‘I just want a blue wall, Mom.’”“I’d been to a million weddings before I got married, so I kind of figured out what I wanted and didn’t want for my own wedding,” said Ms. Henggeler, who married Mr. Kohn in 2015 and had a second child, a daughter, Georgie, almost two years ago. “I felt the same about houses. I’ve lived in so many that I kind of knew what I wanted.”What she wanted from a rental “seemed kind of absurd, and my husband looked at me as if I had five heads. But I said, ‘We’ll find it.’”They found it — and more — in the form of a brand-new transitional colonial in Huntington, N.Y. It had four bedrooms. She would have settled for two bathrooms, but got four and a half. A light, bright kitchen with a six-burner stove? Check. Crown moldings? (In abundance.) Dark hardwood floors? (Be still, her heart.)“I never knew how important flooring was,” she said. “My previous homes had orange-y wood. I stay up at night looking at wood flooring on Instagram.”The backyard is smaller than she would have liked, as is the sole bathtub. Family baths, a favorite routine, are now on hold. But those deficiencies were offset by the basement exercise room (“I was like, ‘Who am I, with a gym in my house?’”); the radiant-heat floors in the bathroom (“My children are now, like, ‘I can’t live without heated floor, Mommy,’ and I’m, like, ‘Me, too,’”); the central vacuum system (“What a princess I’ve become; I can’t live without this now, either”); and the kitchen’s instant hot-water dispenser.The foyer is “actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut Ms. Henggeler was thrilled practically senseless by the foyer, which she has outfitted with a bench and a pillow. “It’s actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said. “In the house we left in Los Angeles, you walked in and you were immediately in the living room, and that drove me bonkers.”But wait! There’s more: a mudroom. “I always wanted one,” she said. “I love what people do with them. A mudroom is a functional space, but you can have fun with it.”Her idea of fun, in this case, centers on baskets — on coat hooks, under the bench, holding gloves and scarves and grocery bags. “I have a hard time saying no to a basket,” she said. “It’s probably the thing I bought most of for this house. My attitude is: Let’s make it beautiful.”Mr. Kohn’s outerwear apparently falls well short of that standard. “Ross wants to hang his jacket in the mudroom, and I tell him to put it in the closet,” Ms. Henggeler said.Another example of their differing views on décor: He likes a modern look with clean lines, while she gravitates toward old houses and feminine touches. “I came into the relationship with a lot of sparkly things,” she said.Out of regard for her husband’s feelings, she has designated Georgie’s room her “girlie-girl outlet,” painting it a blush-rose and using it as a repository for treasures from her own childhood, among them a mirror, some books and framed pictures. Ms. Henggeler sums it up nicely: “The room looks like my apartment would look now if I hadn’t married a man who doesn’t want to live in a house with pink.”Ms. Henggeler painted the nursery for her daughter, Georgie, pink — her own favorite color.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut she understands the appeal of a different palette. She loves how the slate-gray walls in the dining room set off the collection of Jim Marshall rock-star photographs she inherited from her godfather.She says her aesthetic is evolving — though how exactly she isn’t quite sure, apart from moving in the direction of the California-chic look embodied by the designer Jenni Kayne.She is contemplating the acquisition of a chaise longue for the living room. It will take over the spot that was, until recently, filled by a mattress that she and Mr. Kohn bought for the first home they shared. “We didn’t want to take it to the curb until garbage-collection day, so we put it in here. But our kids loved jumping on it, and it stayed for another seven months,” Ms. Henggeler said.“At the moment,” she added, “I’m in the there’s-nothing-a-throw-blanket-won’t-fix phase of design.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More