While there might be some debate as to whether Cobra Kai is really a comedy, you can’t watch the show without laughing, especially if William Zabka’s Johnny is involved. But Emmy voters certainly enjoyed what they were watching and rewarded the show with its first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series.
Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg talked with Deadline about the nomination and what it meant to them.
“We’re all very excited here, it was a big surprise to us,” Heald said. “We love making this show, but we also know that it’s a comedy, a drama, and an action series. It’s a lot of things and we don’t necessarily fit into one category in the minds of some people. Our writers room is full of comedy writers. The concept of our show is taking the villain from The Karate Kid, putting him front and center, and giving him the Better Call Saul treatment where you’re emotionally invested in his story.”
Fans young and old are drawn to the hit show because of its great stories and how it instills a sense of nostalgia to those who grew up watching The Karate Kid.
“I think why our series resonates with so many is because we write for the child within us that loves these movies,” Schlossberg said in the interview. So it ends up being a show children like, which is unique for us because our backgrounds are in edgy comedy, but this show has brought us our widest appeal. I think this is because when we’re writing for Cobra Kai, we’re thinking about our younger selves.”
The Cobra Kai Creators Talk About Shooting During the Pandemic
“We shot during the thick of [the pandemic] and it was our most difficult production from the standpoint of dealing with the Covid pandemic during an already ambitious shoot,” Heald said. “We have never been prouder of a season that we’ve put in the can. We’ve seen it and we know we’ve got the goods. We cannot wait for the fans of this franchise to see everything we did this season knowing everything we went through to put that into place. It’s an amazing memory we’ll all have knowing that it was a battle and we won.”
The creators confirmed that Cobra Kai season 4 was finished with shooting and is currently in post-production, and revealed a small tidbit of info on what fans can expect, noting there will most likely be a battle between Samantha LaRusso (Mary Mouser) and Tory Nichols (Peyton List) on the horizon.
“Sam and Tory are two of our favorite characters in the series and their rivalry is a fresh one that certainly cuts to the core for both of them,” said Hurwitz. “We’re eager for people to see how it plays out in Season 4 because there’s certainly no love lost between those two at the end of Season 3 and there’s a lot more between them going forward. We think it’s a very special season for both those characters.”
Are you excited to see the Cobra Kai cast comeback and battle it out in the All-Valley Tournament? Season 4 is expected to be released late 2021.
