NEED TO KNOW
Cobra Kai co-creator Josh Heald is explaining why a Hilary Swank cameo never happened in the show’s final season
Swank, a two-time Oscar winner, played Julie Pierce in 1994’s The Next Karate Kid
Cobra Kai ran for six seasons, between 2018 and 2025, on Netflix
The final season of Cobra Kai was a treasure trove of surprises for The Karate Kid fans, but the show’s creators were “a little” disappointed that one cameo couldn’t come to fruition.
Josh Heald, who created the series alongside Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, told Entertainment Weekly about wanting two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, who played Julie Pierce in the 1994 film The Next Karate Kid, to pop up in season 6.
“We did reach out in the very early days before the season to see if there was a path [for her to appear],” Heald revealed. “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.”
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Hilary Swank as Julie Pierce in 1994’s ‘The Next Karate Kid’
Heald said after he, Hurwitz and Schlossberg had “the beginnings of a genesis of an idea,” they approached Swank’s team.
The creators wanted to “find out if we could have a discussion with her about it and introduce ourselves,” he said.
Unfortunately for them — and fans — they didn’t have any luck.
“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,” Heald said.
Heald explained that Swank “was just in a place where she wasn’t looking to do that” and return to the Karate Kid franchise, having recently welcomed her twins and being in production on other projects.
She gave the creators “a respectful pass on the idea of even a meeting,” Heald said.
“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,” he added.
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Hilary Swank as Julie Pierce in 1994’s ‘The Next Karate Kid’
Heald said he and his fellow co-creators haven’t lost hope.
Even with Cobra Kai having ended, he said there’s still a chance for Swank to reprise her character in future projects.
“It’s a big piece of the Miyagi-verse that’s still out there,” he teased.
“For us, it was a little disappointing because we like getting everybody, but at the same time, we didn’t sacrifice any huge story that we had fully developed,” Heald continued. “It’s more fruit on the vine for if we can revisit this universe going forward.”
No additional Karate Kid or Cobra Kai spinoffs have been announced, but the creators have hinted at the possibility and Karate Kid: Legends opened in theaters on May 30.
Read the original article on People
