Cobra Kai has been a runaway hit for Netflix in 2020, even though it’s been a few years since the show originally premiered on the former YouTube Red. And now a familiar face from the original Karate Kid franchise is set to appear in the new season.
Tamlyn Tomita Returns
The sequel TV show to the original The Karate Kid franchise shows what happened to Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) in the decades following the events of the 1986 film. Cobra Kai deftly balances the nostalgia of the original film with plenty of modern-day devices, making it enjoyable to old and young fans alike.
Season 3 of Cobra Kai is coming out in January — the first to premiere exclusively on Netflix — and a new trailer revealed that the show will revisit some of the events of The Karate Kid Part II, the movie where Daniel accompanies Mr. Miyagi to Okinawa.
That includes the return of Tamlyn Tomita, who played Daniel’s love interest Kumiko in that film, as well as Daniel’s nemesis, Yuji Okumoto’s Chozen. Tomita is also known to soap fans for her various roles including Ming Li on the now-defunct Santa Barbara, Dr. Ellen Yu on Days of our Lives, and Giselle on General Hospital.
Entertainment Weekly spoke with Tomita, who most recently starred as Commodore Oh on Picard, and Allegra Aoki on The Good Doctor, about her revisiting The Karate Kid universe.
During the interview, the actress shared that the producers reached out to her in an email about the possibility of making an appearance and she was gung-ho about coming aboard the show.
“They came back to me [with a script] in the summer, and it was so sweet. I said I would love to be able to participate,” Tomita said.
Without giving too much away, she shared that fans will be happy with the storyline and it should answer a lot of questions they may have had after the events of the movie.
“Fans will be happy as to where [the characters] find themselves and the kind of discussions they have,” she said. “I think fans will be pleased. I just hope with all the hope in my heart that we all did a good job.”
One of her favorite parts of shooting was working with Macchio again, calling it “like slipping on a favorite pair of socks, or a beloved pair of shoes that still fit, that still are comfortable, and they still look good.”
It’s been 35 years since we last saw Daniel and Kumiko together, so it will be interesting to see if they’ve been in touch all these years or if the Cobra Kai reunion comes as something as a surprise. Stay tuned!
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