Xolo Maridue\u00f1a Says He’d Never Stepped Inside a Gym Before Cobra Kai<\/em>

Xolo Maridueña is broken. Or, rather, his Cobra Kai character Miguel Diaz is. The actor and Los Angeles native began Season 3 in an alarming state: After falling off a stairwell at the hands of rival Robby at the end of the previous season, karate golden boy Miguel ended up in critical condition at a hospital, being (unsteadily) nursed back to health by his (unsteady) mentor Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). So much for the high kicks.

But don’t expect Maridueña to lie down for long. This is, after all, a Karate Kid spin-off—combat is never far from sight. And the series shows no signs of slowing down as it’s quickly picked up an army of fans on Netflix.

We talked to the 19-year-old Maridueña about whether Miguel can ever forgive Robby, bulking up for Season 4, learning to be okay with not eating bread, and that time he worked with David Lynch on Twin Peaks: The Return…which was just as bizarre as you would expect.

One of the fun things about Cobra Kai is that, as much as it’s updated, it can feel like a time warp. Did you grow up with the movies?

My relationship to Karate Kid was pretty faint. I had seen The Karate Kid when I was really young. I played a bunch of tennis as a kid and my mom always said I looked like Ralph Macchio because I wore headbands. But I was like seven or eight and I was like, ‘Who is this Ralph Macchio guy? Why does she keep saying this?’ It’s a little surreal to get to work with Ralph and be like, ‘Ahh, I see it.’

You’re representing the Latino community in a way that hasn’t been shown anywhere else in the Karate Kid universe. How does that feel?

I really appreciate our creators [Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg]. Without their need for this to be a Latino role, I don’t think it would have happened. They did research into the culture. “What types of food are we eating? What are the different dialects? What are the nuanced words when we’re just talking to each other as family?”

The relationship between Miguel and Johnny is, in some ways, the core of the show. What was it like getting to know William Zabka?

Billy is, hands-down, one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. They were testing out different Miguels during auditions and I had a chemistry read with him, and even from that, he was one of the sweetest guys ever. The chemistry you see isn’t that different from real life. I’m glad to call him family now.

Have you learned anything from working with him?

One thing Billy taught me is that it’s so much more pleasant to work with someone who is respectful and always shaking everyone’s hands. That’s something that he didn’t have to say, but in his actions around the set, you just feel that everyone whose path he crosses, their day is brightened.

Aside from Cobra Kai, you’ve been acting since you were quite young.

I’ve been acting for almost half of my life at this point. I’m 19 and I really started when I was 10. At the beginning it was just prints and commercials, until I booked Parenthood and that was the project that solidified that acting could be a job. Up until that point, it was really just a means to pay for college and a side hustle. It was really working with all the wonderful people on that set that made me think: ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’

What about before that? How did you fall into the early gigs?

I lived in Las Vegas for a bit. My mom had a friend who was an agent, but she was in Los Angeles and my mom couldn’t drive me back and forth to LA. Coincidentally, my dad got a job in LA and we moved and that same friend of my mom’s was like, “Is this still something that you’re interested in?” My mom was a little hesitant because this [was] when a lot of Disney stars were falling off the edge.

The child-star cautionary tales.

Exactly, so she was very cautious and I really owe it all to my mom because she sacrificed so much to make sure I could go to auditions. I was a junior in high school during the first season of Cobra and couldn’t go to Atlanta by myself, so she dropped everything to move out with me.

You’ve clearly bulked up since starting Cobra Kai. How did that happen?

So after filming season three, I had actually still never been to a gym.

Wait, what?

I was like, ‘You know what? Tanner [Buchanan as Robby] and Jacob [Bertrand as Eli] are getting ripped.’ Granted, they are a couple years older, but it really inspired me to want to get into the gym. I’d say from January to March, I was hitting the gym every other day, feeling super great, then quarantine rolled around.

Doing these home workouts was just the toughest thing ever. These past couple months, I’ve been trying to inch my way back to living a fit lifestyle. But really, what I’ve found [that’s] the most helpful thing is A) stretch and B) [watch] the food that you’re eating. If I’m eating like a garbage disposal, it’s like one step forward, two steps back. But that’s the hardest part because I love eating all different kinds of food.

Maybe it was just getting older then that makes you look more solid in Season 3.

I think it’s my metabolism slowing and just eating way more. Once we started training on the set, I was really hungry. Then, during filming of season three, it felt like I was gaining weight but it was being dispersed everywhere. After that, I was like, ‘Okay, let’s control this weight.’

Tanner told me now you look like the oldest of the kids.

[Lagush] Well that’s just because of the beard. When we start filming it’ll be gone.

Any foods you try to stick to or avoid?

Man, the biggest thing is trying to have as few carbs as possible. I love bread so much. The first month [of my diet] was the roughest. I felt deprived. Now it’s pretty good. I stick to some rice here and there and occasionally some bread.

It’s funny, everyone would say things like, ‘I hadn’t eaten bread in a really long time and I just ate bread and I feel terrible,’ and I was like, ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ Then I had my eureka moment where I hadn’t eaten bread in a while and I had this big old plate of pasta and I felt so terrible. This is what they’ve been talking about. I’m finally part of the club.

Now that you’re committed to workouts, do you have a favorite exercise?

I don’t like running. I’ve tried so many different things but jump rope is something I’ve really been enjoying. And I recently got a bike, so I’ve been biking.

When I go to boxing class jump rope just kills me.

Dude, it really is killer. You’re five minutes in and you’re like, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m done already.’

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about the Twin Peaks: The Return episode you’re in [the acclaimed “Part 8,” the most inscrutable chapter in a supremely inscrutable series].

[Laughs] Yeahhhhh…

It’s definitely an outlier in your credits. What was it like working with David Lynch?

It was the weirdest… Everything you would expect from a David Lynch project, it really is all of that. Before booking the show, my dad was rewatching Twin Peaks and I watched with him. You can’t think too hard about it.

Working with David Lynch I remember so vividly. We have this scene with me and who I assume to be my date where we’re walking through a gravel path and we find a penny on the ground. We did the first take and there are no lines—I think I had one line throughout the show—and I pick up this penny and David Lynch yells cut.

He walks up to us—he’s the biggest chainsmoker ever, he has like three cigarettes going on at the same time—and he’s like, “Xolo, you know, that was good, but this time I want you to pretend you’re walking on clouds.” Granted, I’m like 14 or 15. I’m like, ‘What the hell are you talking about? I want whatever you’re smoking. What do you mean walking on clouds?‘ Obviously I didn’t say that. I’m like, “Okay, okay.” We go on to the second take, he yells cut, and he comes up and says, “That was perfect.”

So David Lynch sounds like a David Lynch movie.

It’s something you can’t make up. Getting to work with him was such a pleasure. You watch his movies and you’re like, ‘What was this person thinking?’ I got invited to the premiere and I was like, I don’t even know where my scenes are. They showed the first two episodes and I wasn’t in them. Then it became a game of watching every week on Showtime: ‘Is this the week I’m going to be on?’

“How could I possibly enter this story?”

Then after watching the episode, I still didn’t really know what was going on.

This interview was condensed for content and clarity.

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