Cobra Kai is known for showing a lot of respect to The Karate Kid franchise, bringing back characters from the past. And in the fourth season, which premieres on Netflix Friday, the show will get a boost with the addition of Thomas Ian Griffith who played Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III. PopCulture.com caught with some of the Cobra Kai cast members and asked their thoughts of Griffith when he first arrived on set.
“He’s a big man,” Tanner Buchanan, who plays Robby in Cobra Kai, told PopCuture. “He’s scary. But no, he is awesome. He came in and I think everybody was extremely excited that he was there and he just got a whole new energy to the set. Height aside, he is a very intimidating guy in such a good way. It’s incredible to see him jump from like Thomas and the Silver.”
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Mary Mouser, who plays Samantha, echoed what Buchanan had to say about Griffith. “I was so intimidated,” she told PopCulture. “I feel like that’s been my experience with all of these living legends that we’re getting to work with, and getting to be a part of their world. I got the pleasure of meeting Ralph [Macchio] and Billy [William Zabka] very early on, in my chemistry reads, before I ever had to actually step in and work with them for real on set. Then we had Martin Kove come and join us, and I was intimidated about that one. But he’s awesome. I was so intimidated and so nervous, in the best way, because I truly am a fangirl of The Karate Kid films at this point.”
Silver was the main antagonist in The Karte Kid Part III as he was best friends with John Kreese (Martin Kove). He returns to the Valley in Cobra Kai to help Kreese beat Daniel LaRusso (Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (Zabka) in the All Valley Karte Tournament. Silver got into Daniel’s head in The Karte Kid Part III and hopes to do the same with the Cobra Kai dojo.
Vanessa Rubio, who plays Carmen Diaz, told PopCulture that Griffith is “so gracious and wonderful and such an artist. He’s an opera singer, he’s a piano player. You, like, feel art dripping off of him. And he is very gracious and also a martial artist so he did bring a level of like, and he is so tall. So it is just like, whoa, this guy is a real enemy. Very foreboding force. But as the character, he’s foreboding, as an actor and a person, he’s absolutely lovely.”
For Griffith, he loved returning to where it all began for him. “I worked as a writer for so long, to just go back and see this character full circle has been, again, was very fulfilling,” he told PopCulture. “And Karate Kid 3, this character was the first character I ever did. John Avildsen took a chance on an unknown New York actor, and then to create this over-the-top archetypal villain in that movie, and to be able to address, well, what has he been up to for the last 30 years? Going back into that. So that was just a really fun journey for me, to just throw myself in.”
