Since the very beginning, The Karate Kid has focused on underdogs. Whether it’s Daniel LaRusso taking on his bullies at Cobra Kai by waxing-on and waxing-off, or Dre Parker finding his place in Beijing by picking up and hanging his jacket, The Karate Kid universe has always spun stories about overcoming adversity in the face of bullies, loneliness, and being different.
While Cobra Kai has successfully turned Johnny Lawrence from the series’ most-hated character to one of its most beloved, it’s also spawned a whole new generation of teens working their way through trouble with karate. As much as Miguel, Robby, Tory, and Sam embody the main themes of The Karate Kid, no one fits the bill as much as Miyagi-Do’s resident nerd Demetri Alexopoulos, played by Gianni DeCenzo.
Demetri was introduced to Cobra Kai fans in the show’s first season as a loud-mouthed, sarcastic, proud nerd who initially acted as comic relief before joining Miyagi-Do in the second season and going on to become a skilled combatant. With the first part of the show’s sixth and final season having just released on Netflix, I had the chance to talk to DeCenzo about his six-year journey and what it’s like approaching the finish line in November.
Humble Beginnings In Cobra Kai
“It’s nerve-wracking man,” DeCenzo tells me. “It’s a little confusing for me because we reached that finish line a couple of months ago. We finished filming it and now we just have to — the audience has to see it. We’ve crossed the finish line, it’s a little confusing. But yeah, this is it. It’s been very bittersweet.”
DeCenzo’s time with Demetri started all the way back in the show’s first season when the actor was only 15 and struggling to find roles due to being in the middle of a growth spurt that made it tough to compete with 18-year-olds who could stay at shoots later. That changed when he auditioned for Cobra Kai and ended up filming his introductory cafeteria scene, which has him loudly talking about handjobs, a scenario that DeCenzo rightly pointed out made for an “awkward” start.
Although Cobra Kai’s beginning as a YouTube Red exclusive meant that it wasn’t the star-studded hit that it is today, those introductory seasons still acted as major wish fulfilment for long-term fans thanks to Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprising their roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence respectively. As you’d expect from the at-the-time 15-year-old, the original 1984 classic and its two follow-ups (not counting the infamous fourth movie) weren’t something that DeCenzo had grown up with, although he had seen them all, thanks to his father.
“It wasn’t a part of my childhood growing up — but it was a part of my dad’s,” DeCenzo admits. “And so he was the one who introduced me to the Karate Kid trilogy and he got me into it. Getting to then, in turn, be on this show and to introduce him to the Karate Kid and the bad boy of Karate and show him around the Miyagi-do set was a dream come true. It was a generational dream achievement”.
A Karate Kick-Start
Although DeCenzo appeared in several scenes alongside Zabka and Macchio in the first season, it wasn’t until Cobra Kai’s second season that he’d get more involved in the action and become a fan-favourite. After the show’s first tournament changes Hawk and several other characters for the worse, Demetri joins Daniel LaRusso’s dojo, Miyagi-Do, to try his hand at karate and get in on the action.
I was very starstruck to be filming with Ralph Macchio and William Zabka. One of the only scenes I’ve ever had one-on-one with Marty Kove is when Demetri makes fun of his tattoo and he just beats me up. That was also great. Very starstruck for that — I still have the scars to prove it.
This, in turn, meant that DeCenzo finally went from sarcastically standing on the sidelines and making pop-culture references as Cobra Kai’s nerdiest character to training in real-life for its incredibly choreographed fight scenes.
“I wasn’t sure what my character was going to do,” DeCenzo says. “I knew that [Hawk] was going to [learn karate] because it happens almost immediately, but it took Demetri a little bit of time. For the first two seasons, I really didn’t do a lot of fighting or anything like that and I remember watching everyone training and being like ‘Awh okay, cool, I don’t care’. Then I got to do some karate which I then regret because it’s a lot of hard work. It’s very fun, though.”
That Arm-Breaking Scene
What wasn’t so fun for DeCenzo was the infamous arm-breaking scene in Season 3. One of the most pivotal moments for his character in the show comes when he’s ambushed by Hawk and several other Cobra Kai members in an arcade, which leads to him having his arm horrifically broken by his former best friend and the first cast member that DeCenzo met during his time on the show.
Beyond being a mentally scarring moment for Demetri that shapes his growth throughout the rest of the show, it was also one that was incredibly hard to practice for.
“That was a very difficult scene to rehearse for because it required me to scream bloody murder, which isn’t easy to do without the cops being called on you,” DeCenzo says. “I literally went into my t and just practised screaming in agony. We also did them in the actual arcade, so the floors were really dirty in that little laser rink area. It was cool. I’m glad you liked watching me in agony.”
That scene is one that Demetri even manages to get a little bit of revenge for in the first part of Season 6, holding Hawk in the same position he’d been in and angrily shouting “How do you like it?” It’s part of Demetri’s surprising character arc, which shows him taking a leaf out of Hawk’s book and changing his hair while having a much angrier attitude at the thought of leaving his friend behind.
DeCenzo also warned me that agreeing with Demetri in this moment is a dangerous thing to admit to the Cobra Kai fandom. I guess I’m in for some angry emails for saying Demetri is in the right.
Demetri's Dark Side
While Demetri in the show seems to be struggling with himself and having a hard time accepting the changes that are coming up, DeCenzo is at least enjoying the chance to play the character a bit differently than he has been since the show first started.
“When we first got the first couple of scripts, I was like ‘okay this is like the bad boy side of Demetri, that’s cool’,” DeCenzo tells me. “It was definitely a new thing for me. I really had to wrap my head around it and try and figure out where he’s coming from. This is a really difficult season for Demetri in general, he’s really lashing out because he’s scared about losing his friend. Maybe he’s not handling it super well but who in Cobra Kai handles situations well?
DeCenzo can’t tell me too much about what’s going to happen to Demetri in the second part of Season 6, but he does reveal that it’s the most “aggressive” and “fight-oriented” season of the show so far.
What's Next For The Karate Kid
While Cobra Kai might be approaching the finish line later this year, that doesn’t mean that the Karate Kid universe is coming to a . Last year, Sony announced that it was making a new movie starring Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso and Jackie Chan’s Mr Han from the 2010 film.
Not many details have been shared about the new Karate Kid movie but from what we’ve heard so far, it looks like it’s going to ignore the events of Cobra Kai completely and act as a separate thing. If true, that would mean that characters from Cobra Kai don’t have a chance of showing up, something that DeCenzo hopes isn’t true.
“I think the last thing I heard was that it is a continuation of the original movies that pretends Cobra Kai didn’t happen,” DeCenzo tells me. “We had to rearrange the order that we were filming episodes because [Ralph Macchio] was in less of a certain episode than he was in others so that way he could go off and go film.”
Although Karate Kid and Cobra Kai fans are both going to have to wait until 2025 to see what happens to the franchise next, DeCenzo is at least happy that the show’s sixth and final season is ending on a high note and not being dragged out.
“If I’m being selfish, I would do a million seasons because it’s just so much fun to do,” DeCenzo tells me. “I think from a storytelling perspective it’s a really good idea to finish a show where it needs to end and not let it go past its expiration date. I think we’re finishing strong."
