![]() I set it up from the beginning, I said, “I’m very specific with what I do. And then these guys, Don Lee and Ken Barefield, the stunt coordinator and the fight choreographer, they’re fantastic. Oh, absolutely, because first of all, I approach fight scenes just like I would a regular scene - to make sure it’s character-based, that it has the right emotional beats. What’s that like on set? Did you bring any of your own suggestions? I have those skills, so it’s like, why am I going to let anyone else do that for me? I’m certainly going to show that I had that ability. I’m the big shot, I’m looking at it going, “Oh my goodness, I can do this, my kicks are as fast if not faster.” So then when I jump up to show them what I have, they all love it, of course, and I’m stuck doing that for the rest of the season! Believe me, I was sitting in an Epsom salt bath that night, going, “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” But once it’s in you, you want to do it. The irony, of course, is going on set the first day, and the first action sequence I have, they have the six-foot-four stunt guy, exactly my size with a white wig, and I’m watching the stunt people do the first pass. That was one of the questions the guys had: “Hey, are you still a good kicker?” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, we have that covered.” I had been training up until literally the day I got the call. ![]() And for me, it’s not something I choose to do it’s something I have to do. I’ve been on this learning curve my whole life since I started this as a kid. I started Tae Kwon Do and then incorporated other martial arts. As a martial artist, I’ve just kept evolving. Have you kept up a daily martial-arts routine over the years?Ībsolutely. But I had no interest in repeating anything I’d done in the past, so it was really refreshing to hear I could take this archetypal villain from the ’80s and show some different colors. Karate Kid III was my first film, so it was always such a part of me. ![]() And they had really mapped out a great arc for the character that I really responded to, and that was the selling point. What has this guy been up to for the last 30 years? How do we make him a much more three-dimensional character? How do we bring him into 2021? The questions I had are the same questions I think a lot of the fans would have. What was the preparation for returning to the role of Terry Silver?Basically, it was just hearing the vision from the creators of the show, the direction they were taking the character, and asking all the questions that I had. “It was ridiculous back then, and it sort of still is, but that’s the premise of the show.” On a call with Vulture, Griffith broke down how Cobra Kai turned a one-dimensional villain into a three-dimensional antagonist, his own lifelong journey with martial arts, and what it means that, canonically, Terry Silver was on coke when he terrorized Daniel back in the ’80s. “To bring that back now, I don’t think that would’ve worked,” he says. It’s a necessary recalibration of a character born of ’80s excess, something Griffith recognizes despite his enduring fondness for Part III (which was his first film role). The Netflix series’s fourth season has transformed Terry Silver from an amusingly cartoony psychopath to a more complicated, but equally engaging adversary. In actor Thomas Ian Griffith’s hands, Terry was a gloriously over-the-top villain, but when Griffith returned to the role of Terry Silver for Cobra Kai, his character had been reenvisioned with something he never had before: real depth. When you imagine Terry Silver, the sadistic ponytailed karate teacher of The Karate Kid Part III, you probably picture a tall guy lounging in some sauna or bathtub, smoking a cigar and cackling maniacally as he plots the public humiliation of a teenager. ![]() Spoilers ahead for the fourth season of Cobra Kai.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |