A Cobra Kai actor has been accused of assaulting one of his co-stars by biting her.
Martin Kove, best known for playing the villain John Kreese in the original The Karate Kid movie and its sequels, reprised his role for the reboot series, which ran from 2018 until earlier this year.
However, a few days ago he was ‘escorted out’ of a fan event after grabbing his co-star Alicia Hannah-Kim and ‘biting’ her.
Alicia, 37, joined the show as Kim Da-Eun for the fifth and sixth seasons.
After the alleged incident on Sunday, she went to police, with a report detailing what was said to have unfolded.
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The document, reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, stated that Alicia and Martin both appeared at the Washington State Summer Con in Puyallup.
When she stopped to greet the 77-year-old, she told police he grabbed and bit her.
‘I walked past Martin Kove, tapped him on the shoulder and said hello and he turned around grabbed my arm and BIT DOWN HARD almost drawing blood,’ she shared in a handwritten statement to police.
‘I yelped and drew back and then he grabbed my arm again to kiss it.’
The actress said she then went to her table and told her handler as well as her husband, Sebastian Roche, an actor who most recently appeared in the Yellowstone prequel series 1923.
‘I had visible teeth marks and immediate bruising and pain,’ she said in her statement.
‘We approached Martin in the green room later (30 mins) and he was furious and outraged and visibly angry when I told him calmly not to bite me. He insisted he bit me for fun.’
After Kove failed to take her concerns seriously, Alicia and her husband approached an officer at the event to ‘resolve the situation’.
When questioned by police, Kove said he was ‘messing around’, but was told by an officer what he’d done was illegal.
Soon after he ‘admitted to biting Alicia’s arm’.
The report explained: ‘[Kove] said he did it out of jest and he thought he was being funny, and they play fight all the time on the set of Cobra Kai, and he did not think it was a big deal.’
Police then wrote in the report that Kove went on to apologise to his co-star, who chose not to press charges.
She did however file a report, while her injury was documented ‘in case of future incidents’.
Kove was then escorted out of the event.
The actor initially joined the franchise in the original 1984 movie The Karate Kid, returning for its 1986 and 1989 sequels, The Karate Kid Part II and The Karate Kid Part III.
He then reprised his role 34 years later when Cobra Kai was released.
Meanwhile Alicia, who has also appeared on Grey’s Anatomy, Hawaii Five-O and Minx, played Kim Da-Eun, a South Korean sensei who is also the granddaughter of Kim Sun-Yung, the master who initially taught Kove’s character when he was a child.
Metro has contacted Netflix and representatives for Martin Kove and Alicia Hannah-Kim for comment.
Cobra Kai is streaming on Netflix.
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