(This story originally published on April 17, 2019, and has been republished ahead of the “Cobra Kai” Season 3 premiere Jan. 1 on Netflix. The series originally streamed on YouTube’s paid platform.)
“Cobra Kai” is a streaming series about teenagers learning karate based on a movie about teenagers learning karate, so naturally we used some of our time with its stars, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, to shoot the breeze about their on-screen booze selections.
In pretty much every single episode, Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence hits the Coors Banquet beer pretty hard. It’s a pretty specific choice.
“It’s just kind of an avant-garde, off-the-grid beer — people know about it now,” Zabka said, crediting the show for reinvigorating the 1873 brew.
Not that he’s actually ever had one.
“I haven’t really drank a Coors Banquet on the set, because all of that’s water and iced tea, so I can’t totally vouch for it yet,” he said. “But the bottles look cool, man.”
“I should be getting paid by Coors for all of this,” Zabka said.
He really should.
From the other bar stool — er, dojo — Macchio’s all-grown-up Daniel LaRusso has a slightly more refined palate. Mr. Miyagi’s best pupil’s go-to adult beverage is a bit more of the art-imitating-life variety.
On Season 1 of “Cobra Kai,” LaRusso ordered a very specific martini in a very specific manner. That was the writers poking fun at something Macchio did in real life, he told TheWrap.
“When we sold the show — or we were confident we sold the show — the five of us — Jon [Hurwitz], Josh [Heald], Hayden [Schlossberg], Billy [Zabka] and I — went to dinner and we all ordered martinis because we did so well at the pitches,” he said. “And when I ordered mine, I didn’t know that anyone was listening to me, and I said, ‘I’ll have a Ketel [One vodka] straight-up, ice — ICE — cold.’ And then all of a sudden it’s in the script.”
Watch the video below to see how that jab played out on-screen.
“Now anytime the five of us are together… we order them,” Macchio said of his co-star and the series’ three creators, “and then each one of us tries to up the ante for how cold it needs to be.”