A world where The Karate Kid went Back to the Future? Great Scott! And yet, that alternate timeline could have very well been our reality. In his new memoir, Waxing On, Ralph Macchio reveals that he met with Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis about playing Marty McFly in the 1985 time-traveling blockbuster. As the ’80s icon tells Yahoo Entertainment in our latest installment of Under the Covers, the main obstacle blocking his way wasn’t a surprise scarecrow or a loose plug — it was his distinctly New York state of mind. (Watch our video interview above.)
“They were like, ‘Can you lose the New York accent?’ This is more apple pie and all-American,'” the Long Island-born and bred actor says of his audition. “The irony is that the role was played by a Canadian!” That Canadian, of course, was Michael J. Fox, who famously replaced Eric Stoltz in the driver’s seat of Doc Brown’s DeLorean. And Macchio says there are absolutely no hard feelings between himself and the Family Ties favorite. “Absolutely the right Marty McFly was picked.”
Back to the Future wasn’t the only ’80s classic that Macchio just missed out on headlining. He also had a failed audition for super-geek Ted Farmer — a role ultimately played by Anthony Michael Hall — in John Hughes’s trendsetting teen movie Sixteen Candles. “Emilio [Estevez] and I auditioned for the Sixteen Candles together,” he says, referring to his co-star in Francis Ford Coppola’s much-loved adaptation of The Outsiders.
“I had it in my head that I was gonna have this nerdy walk and a little bit of a nasally talk,” Macchio continues. “And John Hughes and the casting director wanted me to be just natural Ralph. But in my head, I was like: ‘I’m not a nerd!’ I was way too cool in my own mind. So I was never in a John Hughes movie. Almost every actor at that time was, and I guess Matt Dillon and I were the two that never got cast in a John Hughes movie.”
While his Noo Yawk attitude may not have suited Marty or Ted, they were the perfect compliment to Daniel LaRusso, the crane kicking-star of The Karate Kid franchise. In Waxing On, Macchio writes that when he first met with the movie’s director, John G. Avildsen, the character had the less region-specific name of “Danny Webber.” But after his audition, the character quickly acquired a Tri-State ZIP code.
“I sort of amped up a little of that East Coast cockiness when I walked in the room,” Macchio recalls of that pivotal first reading. “Any of the cockiness that Macchio had was never backed up — I just pretended that I had that. Daniel’s a little bit more of the knee-jerk kind of ‘act now, think later,’ thing, whereas I’m a little more analytical. If I had gotten my butt kicked by a bunch of motorcycle-riding karate experts, I probably would have left well enough alone. And therein lies no more stories!”
As Waxing On proves, though, Macchio has plenty of stories left to tell both about himself and his alter ego, whose adventures continue on the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai. We spoke with him about his childhood love for Gene Kelly musicals, his relationship with Pat Morita and a never-made sequel that would have paired the Karate Kid with… the Italian Stallion?
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I love that you were a Gene Kelly fan growing up. What did you appreciate about him as a performer?
I remember coming home from school as a kid, and before the milk and cookies, my mom would have the 4:30 movie on the television. This was Channel 11 in New York, and they always had the great musicals on. She was a Betty Grable fan — I’m really dating myself here [Laughs] — but I was mesmerized by Gene Kelly’s athleticism, his handsomeness and his charisma. It was my early stage of witnessing great storytelling though movies like Singin’ in the Rain. And so that’s what I wanted to be! I knew I wasn’t gonna be the quarterback, so I thought I had a shot at a little bit of tap dancing. Therein lies my first steps, pun intended, into the world of entertainment.
Your earliest acting jobs were on TV shows like Eight Is Enough. What do you remember about those experiences?
I did 21 episodes of Eight Is Enough. I was living in New York when I got the part, and was immediately sent out to Los Angeles. I shot two days on the show, and then the actors went on strike for three-and-a-half months! [Laughs] It was a great learning experience working with actors like Dick Van Patten, Betty Buckley and all those young cast members. I remember playing hockey on the sound stage with Adam Rich and Willie Aames. It was a real training ground. It’s interesting because when you come on an established show as a guest star, it’s like you’re jumping on a running train. But I was very much embraced by the cast, and it was a show I had been watching and now I was on the same side of the stage, if you will.
You had a major role in The Outsiders where you get a death scene, which is a big moment. And you’re a young actor at that point: did you realize how key that role was and what a launching pad it would be?
Oh yeah, I was aware. If anything, I was too aware. It was so precious to me; I felt like someone had handed me the scripture, if you will. When I look back on it, it’s like: “You’re just in a movie — relax!” But I knew that “Stay gold” was huge, and you only have one shot at saying it a certain way. All that stuff was big from the novel, and then went to another level when it was in the movie. I hear those lines on the street today.
So I did respect the role, and felt a responsibility toward it because it was a novel that was really popular and required reading in many English classes. Maybe less so no because of political correctness, since it has teenagers smoking and stuff like that. Times are different now and we’re conscious of that stuff. But my kids read it in their English class, so I went into [their school].
That’s a fun part of being associated with The Outsiders, when you get to come into English class and talk to students. A few years ago, Francis Ford Coppola and I sat in a big theater with a bunch of middle schoolers and talked about the film. It’s a great way to carry on the legacy of that film and story that I was fortunate enough to be a part of.
Your original audition for The Karate Kid is on YouTube, and it’s fun to watch your confidence visibly build as you go along. Is that your memory of how that happened — that you felt your confidence kick in as you kept reading?
Yeah, and that’s because I was reading with [director] John G. Avildsen, and he gave me so much information in terms of explaining the character. When I first read it, I felt La Russo’s wide-eyed innocence and tinge of confidence. And the more I read it, I realized: “Oooh, I think I have this guy at hello.” By the end of the audition, John was like, “Maybe you should take some karate lessons.” That was quite extraordinary and doesn’t happen often.
Was there a certain point where you were afraid the role could have slipped away?
Oh yeah, I was getting very mixed signals at one point. Charlie Sheen was hanging around outside the production offices at Columbia Pictures, and I wondered what he was doing there because they didn’t pick up my option. I was in what they call first position, which is before they do screen tests and make a definitive decision. But I had been flown out to L.A. and I was doing martial arts training and BMX training. It was sort of like I had the part, but I didn’t quite have the part. So when I saw this other young actor there, I didn’t know if he was reading for it, too. But as I say in the boo, it was pretty much done once Pat Morita and I got together. It was game over in a good way.
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You write very movingly of your relationship with Pat in the book, and it’s funny that when you first met him, you were like: “Wait, he’s Arnold from Happy Days!” So the idea of him playing Mr. Miyagi was incongruous to you.
Yeah, no one wanted Pat for that role. He spoke about that over the years, as did the studio and the producers. It was like, “No, not Arnold from Happy Days! He’s a silly, crazy comic. He doesn’t have the gravitas to be Mr. Miyagi.” It’s interesting, because I had the same preconceived notion walking into my reading with him … and it was almost foreshadowing how I was going to be a victim of typecasting soon after The Karate Kid. Those are the life lessons or the “Wow” moments that I tried to write into the book: to look at the perspective on how I went through it and somehow landed on my feet is a positive thing.
But I expected to walk in and for Pat to be like “Fonzie!” or whatever. But he was completely grounded and then he just clicked into Miyagi, and at that point it was like there was no other person on the planet. Our natural chemistry was just effortless, and I think that’s when the magic was born. [Morita died in 2005.]
Morita received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance, and was also honored by various Asian American organizations during his life. That role has been described as a stereotype over the years — did he ever wrestle with that?
It’s tough for me to answer for him, and certainly he’s no longer with us, but he did take a great deal of responsibility in being genuine and honest to the culture. At least in my view, he came up as a stand-up comedian, and didn’t even get into that until he was in his thirties. So he came up playing on the stereotype; that was part of his stand-up. I remember him talking about the history of the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II that he was personally connected to. [Morita and his family were interned at the Gila River, Ariz., camp during the war.]
And Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote The Karate Kid, does a beautiful job in that backstory of Miyagi’s tragedy and what Daniel LaRusso means to him and why this movie is more than just the popcorn summer movie of 1984. I believe it was the first major motion picture to ever deal with what happened during World War II, and that was important to him. I would say that balanced whatever the stereotypical part of it [might have been]. In 2022, we might have taken a different angle with that as we do with Cobra Kai and being very careful about stereotypes.
You reveal in the book that the famous “crane kick” was a tough stunt to film, and it became a bit of a dance between you and William Zabka in order to pull it off. Sounds like you got your Gene Kelly moment after all!
Every fight scene is like a dance, it really is. The execution of the punch or the kick is only half of it. It’s also about who takes the punch or kick, and Billy made my well-designed kick even better. His layout head snap is a 10! [Laughs]
Did you realize how iconic that scene would become while you were shooting it?
Oh yeah, we knew. I mean, it all led up to that moment. One thing about that screenplay and the execution of the film, whether it’s waxing the car or standing on one leg, it all leads up to when he takes the crane position. We’ve seen all the lessons, and we’re leaning forward in our chairs. The first time I saw that movie, it was like sudden death overtime or the home run in the bottom of the ninth. And it still is that! That’s the beauty of the movie.
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You alluded to this earlier, but after the Karate Kid sequels came out, you were in a rough place career-wise. Did you come to resent Daniel a little bit because of the shadow he cast over your life?
That’s a good question. You know, I never poo-poohed it or said, “I’m never talking about this.” And it certainly wasn’t the Daniel La Russo character at that point. The Karate Kid Part III was a tough one for me, because I felt like the character of Daniel LaRusso went backwards. The story became a little bit of a cartoon, and I always felt that abandoning the Okinawa love story and going back to just kind of repeat the first movie, but not as good — I was never in favor of that. Nor did I think my performance was at the level of the other films. It just felt like — as sequels often do — it overstayed its welcome or did not evolve. So I think that’s what didn’t help my moving forward and finding other roles.
And the fact was, I wasn’t aging at a pace of “the norm.” I was still the boyish kid as I tried to mature into other roles. My time was up for the moment. Now, in 2022, it’s a whole different story, and I try to tie that into every chapter of the book. I always jump to the present day to talk about that [past] time and how it’s informed the present day, and the gifts and lessons that I’ve learned through that journey.
Before Cobra Kai came along, you were approached with a number of Karate Kid reboot ideas. I think my favorite one is the pitch that would have crossed over Rocky Balboa with Daniel LaRusso. A big part of me wishes that had happened!
I know, everyone wants to see that one! [Laughs] It’s so funny, because at the time the execution of the pitch did not inspire that reaction at all. You jump forward now, and it’s just amazing! Nowadays, they’ll put any multiverse together. If you can figure it out and sell it, they’ll make it!
Cobra Kai just wrapped up its fifth season and we’re waiting to hear about Season 6. What do you hope for Daniel’s future?
We don’t have the official pick-up, so you always have butterflies. But Season 5 has done quite well, and I liked the jump forward for Daniel in terms of him losing control and everyone coming to his aid. He once again became the protagonist that everyone was rallying around, like when he was a teenager. Now he’s got a daughter getting ready for college, and his son is in the midst of high school, and maybe this karate ware behind him. But as always the case with Cobra Kai — our karate soap opera! — one door closes, and another opens. Just as long as it’s grounded in the truth of the characters. I think that’s always what our creators of the show are really mindful about and it’s comfort food for people around the world. It’s like a great cheeseburger you eat as a kid and you get to have it again.
— Video produced by Jen Kucsak and edited by Jason Fitzpatrick
Waxing On is available now at most major booksellers, including Amazon.
