“Cobra Kai” star Martin Kove is finding balance between Los Angeles and Nashville.
“I wanted space. I wanted a ranch at that point. I’m really big on Westerns and all. I wanted to have horses again, and I wanted have some space,” Kove told Fox News Digital.
But he admitted Nashville gets “too cold” for him, even having grown up in “slush” in Brooklyn.
“I don’t think anybody in California really knows how terrific it is to live here because of the weather. And you transition to another place. It’s not the same,” he said, adding, “I need to see beach, I miss it a great deal in Nashville. The lakes don’t do it for me, but it is beautiful.”
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Kove, who lives in a “quaint” area outside the city, added, “It’s very interesting. It’s a whole different [way] living in New York, living in Los Angeles. And then living [in Nashville]. I have deer running around my property and lots of birds. And I sit there with a cigar watching Westerns, you know, it’s cool. It’s fun. And my kids come out a lot. But I come here a lot because you need the regeneration of being in a cosmopolitan area. I need to go to the theater more here.”
The 78-year-old also shared his sympathies with the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires that devastated the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods.
“I felt so much for the people who lost their houses in the fire because back in ’78, I had a ranch in Agoura [Hills]. It was my first property that I ever bought. And I lost it all in the fire,” Kove said. “And I had a chainsaw and a tennis racket to my name in my car. That was it. Everything was gone. And I was only in Hollywood two or three years. And all my souvenirs and everything [were gone]. But I know what it’s like because I rebuilt.”
He continued, “You know, and a couple of my good friends lost their houses. And it’s a tough game. Really tough game.”
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Kove has forged a career in Hollywood over the past five decades, often playing a tough guy, like his antagonistic dojo owner John Kreese from “The Karate Kid,” a role he reprised in the Netflix spinoff series “Cobra Kai.”
With the final season airing now only on Netflix, the “Cagney and Lacey” star has found that people have connected with the original film and the spinoff in different ways.
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“The movie became popular because one of three things happened. Kids identified with the romance that they had as a teenager that didn’t work out, or they were bullied, or they were a fish out of water situation where their parents traveled a lot, and they showed up in different neighborhoods throughout their lives. That was the movie,” Kove said. “The series is a list of phenomenons. I’ve been discussing it for weeks now, the mere fact that the writers write so well is brilliant. The mere fact that three of us kind of look the same as we did 35 years ago, you know? So that is a plus. Then the mere fact that ‘Karate Kid’ was such a popular movie, and here’s a series that’s now written so well.”
He continued, “And the kids watch it and then the parents say, ‘Hey, would you like to see what we were weaned on, what we loved about these characters?’ And it’s the same characters as Billy [William Zabka], Ralph [Macchio] and I.”
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“So, the parents take the kids, the kids watch the movie. The bottom line is, they loved the movie, and now the parents get hooked on the TV series. So you have all these little [phenomenal] things, these elements of success that people and pictures and TV series, they long for that kind of chemistry.”
Kove is deeply appreciative of the writing of his character, who in the film is cruel to William Zabka and Ralph Macchio’s young characters, but is fleshed out more in “Cobra Kai.”
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“I did not want to get involved in the show unless they were going to write my character with vulnerability and an arc and emotional colors. I wasn’t interested in doing the guy from ‘Karate Kid,’” he explained. “And they did. They did everything I wanted.”
He avoided spoilers, but described the fate of his character, saying, “It’s unbelievable. I saw it on the big screen, and everybody was crying. The redemption and the structure of vulnerability. It’s brilliant for everyone, but primarily for this guy who is, in the early days, a monster.”
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Despite having often played physically imposing characters, Kove said, apart from some childhood instances, he’s never really been in a fight in his adult life.
“Because I didn’t look for a fight, I’m certainly not afraid. But. I just never found it. I always find the good points in people.”
But he did find himself in a tricky situation while working with Sylvester Stallone, who he starred with in “Rambo: First Blood Part II” in 1985.
While filming in Acapulco, Kove recalled, “Girls would come up to Sly and ask to dance, ‘Will you dance with me?’ And he would say no, because obvious reasons… And Sly was damned if he danced with her and he was damned if he didn’t [because] the boyfriend would come up and s[ay], ‘What’s the matter? You’re too good to dance with my girl?’ And it would turn into a fight.”
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“But it was always the others who threw the first punch. It was always the others who were anxious,” he added, noting that security helped Stallone leave that particular bar by lifting him over their heads.
Stallone and Kove also shared a manager in their early days, and their first film together was 1975’s “Death Race 2000,” during which Stallone was working on the script for his breakthrough film, “Rocky.”
Kove remembered visiting him in his trailer and seeing him with the script. “I said, ‘Well, what are you doing? And he said, ‘I’m trying to get this boxing movie made.’ And that was 1975, February. So, within a year and a half, Sly was a legend.”
“And it took me a little while longer,” he joked, recalling that when they later worked together on the “Rambo” sequel, “We had a ball.”
The final episodes of “Cobra Kai” are streaming now on Netflix.
