It may be almost four decades since The Karate Kid entered cinematic history and changed the way we look at car wax forever, but thanks to Cobra Kai, Ralph Macchio is chopping, punching and crane-kicking higher than ever.
In the new issue of Empire (available for pre-order here), we spoke to Daniel LaRusso himself about his journey with the iconic martial arts franchise, including what persuaded him to come back to it – a three-hour lunch in Tribeca with the Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald. “As I started listening and peeling the onion layers off this concept, I saw the freshness in it”, he says. “There was still a leap of faith, but I knew now was the time. I just trusted my gut.”
Portraits by Dylan Coulter.
His gut was right. Almost 129 million people have now watched the first episode of_Cobra Kai_on Youtube, where the show started, before it moved to Netflix and became one of the streaming platform’s biggest hits. The much-anticipated fourth season lands later this year, and after already bringing back_The Karate Kid_icons Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), John Kreese (Martin Cove) and Macchio,Cobra Kai_is adding a new badass into the mix –The Karate Kid Pt. III_’s Terry Silver, played by Thomas Ian Griffith.
Despite Pt. III being a box office bomb in comparison to its two predecessors, Macchio believes it’s possible to take elements from a not-good film, and turn them into something great. “There’s another angle to Terry Silver, and when you call upon those stories and dive into the grey areas, it expands the universe and the story’”, Macchio says. “It’s this chance to take something that didn’t work, and try to make fruit out of it. Can it bear fruit? It has. Season four is next level.” We can’t wait to see it.
See more exclusive images from our photoshoot (portraits by Dylan Coulter) with Ralph Macchio and read the feature in full in the new The Book Of Boba Fettissue of Empire – on newsstands from Thursday 25 November, and available to pre-order online here. Cobra Kai is streaming on Netflix from 31 December.