One of the many great aspects of keeping up with Cobra Kai over the years is that we get to see the kids in the show go through physical and psychological changes that connect us to them in a way that sometimes feels like they’re a member of our family. In a recent interview with Collider Ladies' Night, series star Mary Mouser sat down with our own Peri Nemiroff to talk about the experience of growing up on a popular TV series set.
During the interview, Mouser talked in length about a series of topics, including bad auditions, her default throwing-up response to most situations, and the first time she met her onscreen father Ralph Macchio. The actor also talked about having grown comfortable giving her own input to showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg about the direction that her character Sam LaRusso is going, and even taking part in collaborating with the script of some episodes. The actor also admits that the lives of both the real and fictional girl have sort of merged at this point:
“The cool thing is… I mean, our writers are incredible at adapting and writing to these characters. And we kind of all co-created at this point, you know, I get to have a say, which is a really cool thing as a young actor to be taken seriously and to be able to say, ‘Hey, you know, I don't feel like that's something Sam would say,’ and they're like, ‘You're absolutely right. How would you say it?’, and we can build off of each other, which is very cool and unique and special that they're so respectful of every different facet of what everybody is bringing to the table. So, I think we've all kind of gotten to morph with these characters as we've gone, because it's funny looking back at Season 1 Sam… I loved it. I was excited I was in it. But there's certain things where I'm like ‘Oh man, Sam from Season 5 would never have had that pool party’, and just be like ‘Whatever dad’, you know what I mean? It's so cool to go back and kind of see that, but I feel like at this point, I am Sam. Sam is me.”
During the interview, Mouser also talks about that moment by the end of Season 5 in which Sam discovers that she didn’t lose the All Valley tournament and that, to no one’s surprise, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) cheated. She only discovers it because Tory (Peyton List) budges under the pressure of her guilty conscience and tells the truth. However, Sam's reaction to the messenger is a little surprising.
“I totally can say, there's better ways to handle so many of the situations that Sam handles, that anybody handles… And also the fact that the fact that Tory knew that information and kept it to herself. I mean, it's definitely the heat of the moment of seeing Miguel with another girl right there in that second. But it's also, you know, coming out of having just had this fight at this dojo, [which] Tory also bailed on, and there's frustration there […] Sam spent so much time gearing up for this showdown with her, and being like, ‘I'm gonna get to vindicate myself, I get to fix all these issues that I've seen falling apart in my family’. Sam's carried around this guilt […] ‘I let my family down, my family's falling apart […] because I failed at that tournament.’ And I think all of that weighed. […] Seeing Miguel struck the match, but the flame was already waiting to burn for Sam all day. And then realizing that Tory knew this and didn't do anything about it… [I’m] not defending Sam's actions, but for me in that moment […] really comes down to so much more than being angry about a boy for me. That's a broken heart.”
Cobra Kai is the spin-off series to the late 80s film franchise Karate Kid, starring Macchio and the late Pat Morita. It centers around the clash between different karate approaches, and the ruthlessness of the Cobra Kai dojo, which reached new heights after their All Valley Tournament win at the end of Season 4. The series originally premiered on YouTube Red, but after it was canceled, Netflix picked it up and the show has done consistently well so far, audience-wise.
You can check out the full interview below: