‘A Taste of Love’: Yep, That’s ‘Cobra Kai’ Bad Guy Martin Kove in a Hallmark Movie

Hallmark is, without a doubt, the most unpredictable network on television. Following the most thematically and conceptually ambitious slate of holiday movies to date, the network continues to toss curveballs at viewers expecting the most down-the-middle entertainment. And while A Taste of Love (airing Monday, February 19) may be Hallmark at its most Valentine-iest, it does include one major surprise: Martin Kove.

Yeah, I’m talking about John Kreese from Cobra Kai, a character that’s a relentless bad ass who spends his spare time intimidating the hell out of car salesmen and teenagers alike. Martin Kove, who originally played Kreese with stone cold intensity in 1984’s The Karate Kid, is now part of Hallmark’s big happy family. A Taste of Love finds him taking off the gi and putting on an apron to play a chef in need of some help from his TV chef daughter (Hallmark mainstay Erin Cahill). Making matters even more special for Kove is the fact that his son, Jesse Kove, stars as the film’s romantic lead. Hallmark really is fun for the whole family.

Decider caught up with Martin Kove ahead of A Taste of Love’s premiere on Hallmark. Kove opened up about working with his son, the time he made the entire crew cry, and whether or not he’d ever star in his own Hallmark romance.

Decider: When audiences think of Martin Kove, they probably think of Cobra Kai and John Kreese — one of the most intimidating characters on TV. That’s why it’s so surprising to see you in a Hallmark movie like A Taste of Love. How did you get involved with A Taste of Love? I know your son is in it, too.

Martin Kove: My friend who I’ve done tough stuff with — Lincoln Lageson is his name — he’s a producer and he brought me in, he says, “Read this. The directors don’t know that you can do this kind of thing.” And I love playing vulnerable characters. I just don’t get a chance to do it. I cry at supermarket openings, and I never get a chance to play those characters. My most cherished moments on Cobra Kai are the soft moments that I have with Bill Zabka, and I have moments with Peyton List. Those are my favorites, not the tough guy — but Kreese is a tough guy because probably some venom in my body that rises every time I read this character. Sometimes it’s hard to shake. If you do this for three months and you play John Kreese, a tough guy, without some vulnerable intermissions, it’s not healthy to stay in that dark place.

But in any case: I love working with my son. I love working with Lincoln Lageson. I read it and I said, “Okay, I’ll come do it.” And we hung in Dunedin, Florida and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It gets chalked up with Wyatt Earp or with some Cagney & Lacey moments because of people being so nice and Florida being such a conducive place to make films.

What was it like working with your son, Jesse? He’s done a few of the TV romance movies. Is there anything that you learned from him?

He starred in this Lifetime movie, which was a Christmas movie [The Holiday Proposal Plan], which was delicious. He’s like Cary Grant — and it’s not a dad thinking about your son that way. It’s really just one actor thinking of another actor.

We just finished this movie in Parrish, Florida, where he is a coward in this western town and he makes a deal with the devil to be the fastest gun in the West. Then he ultimately kills too many people and he wants to renege, and the devil says, “No.” You get wonderful actors in the piece and you watch my son gravitate to each and every other character. As a lead in the movie, you have to play with everybody and he does such a good job. I don’t want to tell you the end, but he becomes vulnerable again at the end. And I watch him and I say, “I was busy trying to be Steve McQueen in the first 25 years of my career.” I was always trying to be in a Great Escape and do Magnificent Seven and all this, and then I realized it’s okay to be Marty Kove. He doesn’t have that problem. He goes for the essence of his own instrument. He’s very sensitive and kind, but at the same time he can play a gunfighter.

Obviously A Taste of Love is going to showcase a different side of yourself than what’s seen on Cobra Kai. What’s your character, a chef named Glenn, like?

Glenn is the father of Erin Cahill, who’s done many, many Hallmark movies. She has a soft and lovely image, but boom, the moment we met it was great. She liked to improvise, I like to improvise, and we just hit it off and are still the best of friends.

And that softer side of me is easier to play now that I can tap into my instrument more than what I was trying to do 20 years ago. I use Marty Kove. Marty Kove likes to cook, but he doesn’t have the patience to do the seasonings and the sauces. I like a lot of the finer things. It really allows you to tap into yourself to play these characters, especially a chef who owns a restaurant. And Glenn is a character of patience, and many times tough guys don’t have patience. So this takes me into another place, and I enjoyed working with the people.

I enjoyed the fact that my mother owned a restaurant and I did a scene about my grandmother passing the restaurant on to me, and I did the scene with with Erin. I made the entire crew cry and I’d never done that before. It was such an emotional scene and I felt so emotional talking about my mother owning the restaurant, you get a little sense memory, personal stuff, and I welled up a little. All these crew men were coming up to me afterwards and saying, “Where did you go with that scene? We all were crying.” That’s the stuff that makes you feel good, things that I don’t get a chance to do much.

You mentioned that you also like to cook. Are there any cooking techniques or recipes that you picked up while making A Taste of Love?

I really learned how to prepare things, like dicing, using a knife, creating certain cuts that you’d like to create for the purpose of tasting differently, and the proper way to make omelets. I make omelets, but I make omelets like if I was out in the prairie. There’s a certain way to make omelets and have them folded in half and use a little bit of cilantro and a little bit of a feta cheese, and smoked salmon lox. There’s a certain time to cook these things and then put them in the egg to make the whole omelet taste better, and I learned all that. I was making an omelet just like making a pancake and it really is an art to make. I can’t give away the ending, but Erin’s character creates a meal that is really good. I tried to create it, I tried to do it here, and I couldn’t do it. I made such a mess, but I tried.

As you alluded to earlier, Hallmark has a roster of stars like Erin Cahill who make multiple movies for the network. Is that something that you would you be interested in? Are there other roles for you in Hallmark movies?

I would love to do a romance movie. And you could create some interesting stories, whether it’s an ex-boxer, whether it’s ex-macho guys in some form of life or — Hallmark doesn’t have a lot of bad guys, but I love stories where the bad guys turn good. That’s why I like my comic book, Prodigal Son. I like those transitions a lot. And I would love to do a romance over there, I really would.

I like the audience that Hallmark reaches with their movies. I remember I did a soap opera back in 1981, The Edge of Night. I gave them parameters. I played a guy who is hired by the wealthy husband to get rid of the wife, and I said, “If you want me to do this, I want to wear a ninja outfit and I want to have a scope on a .44 Magnum.” And I had my linen stuff that I wore from Cannes Film Festival and I wanted to wear that in the daytime when he has a fake job. And they said, “Mr. Kove — this is daytime TV. We can’t do all that black ninja outfit and a .454 Casull,” which is a bullet like this big. I said, “I don’t want to do it unless I’m gonna have fun.” And then they agreed. Turns out to be my character, Romeo Slade, got the highest ratings of Edge of Night ever for three weeks. And I always think about Hallmark doing the same thing, extending themselves further and further into an area of television that is expansive. And the soap opera did it back in ’81. Hallmark does that. Hallmark will play will be more, I guess more inventive, and a little more progressive with their stories each and every year. And I admire that. I admire that progression.

A Taste of Love premieres on Hallmark on Monday, February 19 at 8 p.m. ET