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Joe Seo has been with Cobra Kai since the beginning. Kyler (Seo) was the leader of the bullies we saw terrorizing Miguel (Xolo Maridueña). By season 3, Kyler had joined Cobra Kai after they’d ousted Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) as sensei. In a recent interview, Seo looked back at his original audition, and how it was like standing before Vladimir Putin.

'Cobra Kai' star Joe Seo puts his hands on the walls
Joe Seo | Randy Shropshire/WireImage

Seo was a guest on the Kicking It with the Koves podcast on April 27. He shared with co-star Martin Kove, and his co-hosts Rachel and Jesse Kove, how he auditioned for the role of Kyler. Cobra Kai returns with season 5 Sept. 9.

Before ‘Cobra Kai’ and Kyler, Joe Seo was a working actor

Seo has been acting since he was 18 in 2006. 12 years later, Cobra Kai was casting season 1 and Seo went out for the role. 

“The audition process for Kyler, I remember getting the sides and everything, I was like all right so they want this bully character,” Seo said on Kicking It with the Koves. “Okay, I’ll play it. Then I did it during the first audition rounds and then I didn’t hear back from them. So I was like all right, that’s cool. Just audition for other stuff. Then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, and then they gave me a callback and I was like okay, cool.”

The Vladimir Putin audition for ‘Cobra Kai’

Neither Seo nor Cobra Kai are political. Seo simply made the connection to Putin’s iconography. 

“So I went there and in retrospect, it was with the big three. [Cobra Kai creators] Jon [Hurwitz], Josh [Heald], Hayden [Schlossberg] were all there sitting but I didn’t know who these people were. It was in a really long, it wasn’t like a regular casting area. It was like a long meeting room. You know Putin, he has this huge ass table and people are sitting on the other side? That’s what it seemed like. They were all on the other side 10, 20 meters away and I’m just like on the other end of the table.”

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Seo joked about the echo he would hear from the other side of the Putinesque table. 

“And they were like, ‘Perform something, something, something. Over there, there, there,’” Seo said. “Because it was that big. So I was like okay, fine.”

Joe Seo acted like Kyler in his audition

If you’re wondering how Seo impressed the Cobra Kai creators, he went a little method. He knew they were looking for a bully, so he acted like one. 

“I did my thing and I remember I did some stuff that was not on the script as in I kicked a chair,” Seo said. “Right afterwards, because I’m a very nice Asian, I just said, ‘Sorry about that and thank you for the time.’ I was like, ‘Sorry about that, sir. I’m going to take off, bye. You guys have a great day.’ I guess they liked it. Then I opened the door and left. And I still didn’t know that I got it or not. Then a few days before our flight, maybe four, five days before our flight, it was like, ‘Hey, you got it. Get ready.’ Oh, when are we leaving? ‘In three, four days.’ Great, all right, bye. Pack up and go.”

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