When Thomas Ian Griffith, who made his screen debut playing the psychotic baddie Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III ,first heard of Cobra Kai, he was completely unimpressed. “I heard they were doing a TV show based on the Karate Kid series. And thought, ‘Oh my God, this will be a disaster,’” the 59-year-old says from his Los Angeles home. “My wife and I tuned into YouTube one day, watched the pilot episode, and we were blown away. And just binged the first season going, ‘This is smart, it's irreverent, it's funny, it's nostalgia.’ It had all those great ingredients.”

But Griffith didn’t bust out his black gi or his character’s signature ponytail quite yet. He figured because the show focused on the OG characters (like Ralph Macchio's Daniel LaRusso and William Zabka's Johnny Lawrence) that he probably wasn’t going to get the call anytime soon. It didn’t help that he retired from acting to become a writer years prior, culminating in a stint on NBC’s fantasy series Grimm.

When it seemed more and more likely that his character might make his way back to that Reseda strip mall dojo, he wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted. “I was on the fence,” he says. “It's like, how are they going to bring this bigger-than-life character to this world? And how would he fit in? And what has he been doing for the last 30 years?”

To say Terry Silver is larger-than-life is, frankly, an understatement. He's almost a cartoon version of what a karate film villain would look like. As originally written, Silver is John Kreese’s Vietnam war buddy and silent partner in the Cobra Kai dojo who made himself a fortune dumping toxic sludge all over Asia while making deals half-naked in a sauna talking into a cell phone the size of a large brick. How could you turn this guy into an actual character?

"When creators [Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg] contacted me, we did a Zoom, and they had answered all those questions," Griffith says. "They had mapped this incredible backstory.”

That’s it. He was sold, and his first screen role would be the thing that got him out of the writers’ room and back in front of the camera. Though he had kept up his karate practice in the intervening years, he was still nervous until his first day on set. “I just had this very freeing feeling, walking on saying, ‘This is my space. I own this,’” he says about getting back into the acting spirit as easily as he left it.

In our full conversation, Griffith talks about being recruited into the Karate Kid universe twice, his life-long dedication to martial arts, and how he got back his famous ponytail.

MH: The Karate Kid Part III was your first movie role. How did you get involved initially?

Thomas Ian Griffith: I was late to the audition. And my wife was like, "Oh, just go late. Show up, show them what you're about, and get the hell out of there." So I went, and the casting person said, "Well, you missed John [Avildsen, the director]. But he's on set screen testing actors at Warner Brothers. If you go over there, you can meet him." So I went over there, met him. I waited while they were screen testing. I read a scene with him, and he liked something he saw. He said, "Stick around until after the screen test. I want you to do a little scene with Ralph Macchio," who was on the stage testing the other actors. And so I went to walk on, I had the pages in my hand, and [John] took them away and said, "Just go improvise the scene." I did, and we had fun. And then he said, "I'm going to call your agent. We're going to set up an official screen test and come back."

And I was like, "Well, what role is it?" Because there was the Vietnam vet, and there was the bad boy of karate. I was 28, 29 at the time. I was like, "Which one am I doing?" He says, "Don't worry about it—just come back." And then they sort of rewrote it and created this character, this archetypal bigger-than-life character. I give John credit, because he took a chance on an unknown actor. And just said, "Go for it." Rolled the dice with me. I remember just saying, "Is this too much?" And he just said, "Just keep doing it. I want every kid in America kicking you in the shins." And he got it!

What was your karate background at that point?

I had grown up studying it—it was my sport through high school. I got involved early. I was getting into scraps in the schoolyard all the time. And my mom was a dance teacher. And one of the little rumbles, as we called them, I got in as a kid, I saw a kid from the city throw this spinning hook kick. And I was like, "Wow, what was that?"

So he took me to the north end of Hartford, where he trained, and it was this very strict TaeKwonDo school. And they pulled back the curtain. They were going up and down rolls with such precision. It was like... this was fantasy for me. Unbelievable. I just became addicted to it. I just loved it. And it ended up being such a part of my life, still. to this day. because it crossed over to all my disciplines. It gave me that focus and discipline—a way to live my life.

Did you have to do any training to get back in that Terry Silver fighting shape?

I do some kind of training every day in my life, it's just part of my daily schedule. So I've kept it up. I said, “Oh, I'm in shape. I'll be able to do this.”

What I didn't expect is doing it 12 hours a day. It's a different feel. They had the stunt guy just like me—he's 6'4'', and they had the white wig on him. I watched him shoot the master of the first action sequence I was supposed to be a part of, and I'm sitting behind the monitor watching. It's like, "Oh, I can kick so much faster than this." And now it probably was all in my mind, thinking what I used to be capable of. Then, when I jumped out and did it, the director and the stunt team were so excited. But then, of course, they expected me to do it the entire season—that first day after doing it for how many hours, there was an Epsom salt bath that night. I was thinking, oh, I'm feeling it.

What about the hair? Did you have the hair grown out for Terry Silver?

When I took my first Zoom, we hadn’t been working. I'd gone nowhere. I was working in the office on a project with my wife—we're a writing team. And when I Zoomed with the guys, I hadn't gotten a haircut because we hadn't gone anywhere. And they were like, "Don't cut your hair." And I was like, "Sure."

At first I could barely get the ponytail. But they said the ponytail has to be the same length, so they added a little piece.

Did that get you into the Terry Silver mindset? You put the hair back. Was that it?

Well, that's such a good question, because you see Terry resists going back into that place. He's tried to fill his life with beauty, and art, and music. And then when Kreese comes back, it's the one pin that bores through the castle wall, it's that one thing that's still eating away at him, and he goes back.

How did it feel playing the same character again so many years down the road?

Well, as an actor, my thing was... I had no interest in going back and repeating myself, doing exactly what he was. But they had broken this character down to ask what was driving him? What were his fears? What was the thing that he's been battling? He's on the path to survival, to try to redeem himself from the whole experience in Vietnam, from all he went through, that near death experience.

And his biggest fear, facing cowardice to say that will not happen again. We took this two-dimensional character from the movies and made this rich three-dimensional character with all these colors, and emotions and you go, “Oh, that's so much to lock into as an actor.” So it's like, it just clicked. It was just meant to be.

Because the original Terry Silver, it's odd that he’s this old man terrorizing a teenager?

You’re right. It’s absurd. A billionaire is going to go back and torture a teenager. And stop everything else that he has going on. It's like, what is that about?

But there's something just wonderful about that. That's the whole series—it's a life and death situation about a teen karate tournament in the San Fernando Valley. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous it's fantastic.

So do you think that the authorities ever got to Terry Silver for all that toxic sludge he dumped in Borneo?

Terry Silver has a lot of money. A lot of money can manipulate the system, unfortunately. We all know. So I think he's a very intelligent person, and he's found a way around it.

What do you think has changed about him over the years to get him to become more three-dimensional?

I think the experiences of life. Also because I'm old, and we're older, it's like... going through it. You think you're on this path, and you have to believe it's right. At a certain point, it's very difficult to say that I'm on the wrong path, and so comes the commitment to stay on that path.

Did you have a preference between doing the dramatic scenes versus the action scenes?

It was a nice crossover. It was a good mix. Because for me, the action scenes...I think this is another reason why I was walking away from the whole action thing—is because I had been running in place, doing the same type of thing. And truthfully, I had gotten bored with it, and I wanted to do other things. And as a writer, I got to experience other things.

So, for action scenes, they have to come out of characters. They have to come out of a need to express. And those scenes should be looked at like a dramatic scene rather than just action. If it's just an action beat, go watch some of the greatest fighters in the world. I mean, it doesn't interest me. But if there's an emotional drive to those scenes, then they can come to life.

There's a lot of bad guys on Cobra Kai, Terry Silver being one of them. But also John Kreese and Johnny Lawrence. Who is the baddest guy on Cobra Kai?

Wait a second. What do you mean bad guy? He's misunderstood. I think they all have a past that labels them into that bad guy category. Now, who will go to the biggest extremes? I think Terry has the most to lose, so I think that makes him pretty dangerous. And also, obviously, I always say, if Daniel had just forgiven him that first time they met, he probably would've let it go.

Terry really wants just that friendship and love in his life, like we all do, but when he doesn't get that, then that sort of propels down this kind of a bad path.

Well, he also has the most money, so he can do the craziest shit.

And there's a danger in that, of course.