Sean Kanan Talks Deacon’s ‘Crisis’ After ‘B&B’ Murders & ‘Cobra Kai’ Season 6

The Bold and the Beautiful’s Sean Kanan (Deacon Sharpe) will reprise the role of Mike Barnes in the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai, premiering July 18 on Netflix. The actor, who first appeared in Karate Kid III in 1989, and joined the cast of Cobra Kai in Season 5, was thrilled to discover there would be more story for Mike.

“It’s a very unique situation to have the opportunity to reprise a character that I’ve played in the past, let alone 35 years in the past,” Kanan begins. “When I played the character originally, I was this young, 20-year-old kid, and now being a man in his 50s, I’ve had a significant amount of more life experience, both as an actor and as a human being. I think that the ability to bring that to your work helps make the work more nuanced and layered.”

Kanan says he appreciates playing a mature version of his alter ego, who has shown significant growth since his origin story. “It was great to have a more multi-dimensional character,” he enthuses. “In the Karate Kid III, the character is really just a unidimensional thug, and now we see that he’s had a redemption arc with apologizing to Daniel and has gone through the pain of having his furniture store burned down and his wife divorce him. I think Barnes has not only considered his actions of the past but realizes that he was manipulated just like they were by Terry Silver. I mean, he even says in Season 5, ‘What kind of guy hires one young kid to, to terrorize another kid?’ So, Barnes wants to do what he can to make things right.”

To that end, the character will play a bigger role in helping the kids of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang prepare for competition, which means sharing more scenes with the show’s lead actors. “He finds himself in this unlikely friendship with Daniel and Johnny Lawrence and Chozen,” previews Kanan. “First of all, I’ve known Billy [Zabka, who plays Johnny] since 1987. I was doing a TV show called Werewolf for Fox. I was the guest star and John J. York [who plays Mac Scorpio] from General Hospital was the star of the show. The other guest star on the show was Billy Zapka’s best friend. So, Billy showed up on set and hung out for a day and I got to know him and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is great. This is Johnny Lawrence.’ I had just seen the Karate Kid movies a couple of years before in the theater, having no idea that within a year, I was going to be not only a part of the Karate Kid franchise, but I would be a member of the Cobra Kai family. I mean, it was just crazy.

“So, it was great to go back in Season 6 work again with Ralph [Macchio, Daniel LaRusso] and with Yuki [Okumoto, Chozen Toguchi] and Billy,” he continues. “Yuji I know really well. He’s a terrific guy. He has been very involved with a martial arts tournament that we have in my hometown of Newcastle, Pennsylvania to honor my late sensei, Fumio Demara. Billy and I just get along great, and Ralph is wonderful. It was great to reconnect with these guys as an adult. You’ve got kids, you’ve got this career, and we had much, much more in common at this point in our lives than we did back then.”

Courtesy of Sean Kanan

Kanan, a proficient martial artist, will be showing off his skills in the dojo this season. “I’ve kept up with my martial arts all these years,” he notes. “I trained extensively with a private taekwondo instructor leading up to the time that I went and did Season 6. And I’m in much better shape for Season 6 than I was in Season 5. I’m probably about 15 pounds lighter so I felt like I was going in as sort of the best version of me.”

Speaking of best versions, his B&B alter ego, Deacon, is thriving both professionally as a restaurateur, and personally now that he’s newly married to resident baddie Sheila Carter (played by Kimberlin Brown). “I think that for the first time in Deacon’s life, the pieces are coming together,” Kanan observes. “It’s funny, when I came on the show, Deacon was a bad guy and I relished playing the bad guy. He’s made horrible mistakes, and he has done everything he can to rehabilitate himself and repair his relationships where possible. Deacon really is a guy that believes in second chances. He loves Sheila without a doubt, but he’s also invested in her turning her life around because he’s turned his life around. I can absolutely relate to that on a personal level, because I’ve done that in my life. And I think it’s the first time Deacon is really experiencing some significant success.”

But Deacon’s world may come crashing down now that two of his close pals — Tom (Clint Howard) and Hollis (Hollis W. Chambers) — have been killed within a short time span. Suspicion naturally falls on Sheila, which makes Deacon’s grieving even more complicated. “He really crushed,” previews Kanan. “Deacon is a pretty street-smart guy and there’s definitely a flicker of, ‘It’s possible she has it in her. I don’t want to believe it. I’m going to support her.’ He’s definitely concerned about the fact that there have been two homicides in his business and business is taking a toll from it. Deacon is having a crisis for sure.”

Related

'Cobra Kai' Trailer Raises the Stakes: Everything We Know About Final Season

While Deacon navigates that drama, Kanan, who in addition to acting is an accomplished author and Daytime Emmy-winning producer, is looking forward to the premiere of Cobra Kai. “I think optimistically that this has the potential to be the most streamed event in television history because they’ve announced that it’s the last season,” he declares. “Cobra Kai has done well north of two billion minutes streaming so far and I think that was just through Season 4 or 5. So I think that a lot of people are going to go back and revisit the earlier seasons in anticipation of this being the final season, and I think that people all over the world are going to watch this and it’s going to be spectacular. It’s a 15-episode final season with multiple dynamic locations. It’s going to be something really special, and I’m just I’m honored that I get a chance to be a part of it.”

The Bold and the Beautiful, Weekdays, CBS

Cobra Kai, Final Season Part 1, Thursday, July 18, Netflix (Part 2, November 28)