Why the Most Famous 'Karate Kid' Star Didn't Appear in 'Cobra Kai'
Netflix’s Cobra Kai, the hit streaming sequel series to The Karate Kid movie franchise, will be releasing its final five episodes on the streaming platform on February 13. Still, there was one person the creators could never get on the show.
Cobra Kai premiered on Netflix in 2018 continuing the stories from the original Karate Kid movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s in present-day California. The series features stars from the films like Ralph Macchio and William Zabka while introducing fresh young fighting heroes.
While creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg were able to involve the former stars, including the original Karate Kid Macchio, they always wanted to get Hilary Swank in the show, they told Rolling Stone.
The actress starred as Julie Pierce in 1994’s The Next Karate Kid.
“She just didn’t want to do it for whatever reason,” Macchio told the publication about Swank joining Cobra Kai.
Heald said they had even started to plan out what her character’s arc would have been.
“We started gaming things out in the writers' room, but before we got too deep, we had to reach out to Hilary and find out would she be willing to come and play with us,” he says.
Related: 15 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2025 That Are Totally Worth Your Time
He said the idea of her coming into the show gave the room a great group of questions to start attacking like if she and Daniel (Macchio) had been in touch within this world and where is she now?
“We had all these fun roads to go down, but we didn’t get to go down them,” he said. “She’s a character that we have a lot of excitement to revisit.”