Hilary Swank Turned Down COBRA KAI and the Creators Are Still Bummed About It
Cobra Kai pulled off something few legacy sequels manage to do, reignite the heart of a beloved franchise and bring back nearly every major player from the original Karate Kid films.
But, one character never made it back into the dojo… Julie Pierce, played by Hilary Swank in The Next Karate Kid. Now, the show’s creators are opening up about how that door was closed before it ever really opened.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cobra Kai co-creator Josh Heald explained they had plans in place for Swank, but it just never came together.
“We did reach out in the very early days before the season to see if there was a path [for her to appear]. We had an inkling of an idea about how she could come into this story and not have to commit to 10 episodes or something.
“ It was going to feel like it could be a one- or two-episode arc, similar to what we did with Elisabeth Shue, where you can bring Ali back in at a pivotal moment and affect an important relationship.”
The creative team team did a great job managing to pull legacy characters back into the fold. William Zabka and Ralph Macchio were game from the beginning. Yuji Okumoto (Chozen), Sean Kanan (Mike Barnes), and Thomas Ian Griffith (Terry Silver) all returned and got meaningful story arcs. Elisabeth Shue even came back for a key moment. So naturally, they thought Swank might be up for something similar.
But that wasn’t the case.
“On her end, it was very respectful, but we never got that opportunity to sit down and pour our heart out the way that we typically do when we bring back characters from the legacy.
“She was just in a place where she wasn’t looking to do that. She had had babies. I think she was in production on something at the time, and it was a respectful pass on even the idea of a meeting.
“She didn’t want us to go through the trouble of flying out to her and putting our heart on the sleeve because it just wasn’t something she was ready to do at that moment.”
Still, for the creators, it's clearly a missed opportunity. They had the “beginnings of a genesis of an idea” for Julie Pierce and were eager to see how she could’ve fit into the larger Miyagi-verse. But they never got to pitch it.
For fans holding out hope, all might not be lost. The creators are already developing spinoffs and have hinted there’s more story left to tell in the world Mr. Miyagi built. So who knows? Maybe Julie’s moment could still come, just not in the way we expected.