'SNL' Alum Bill Hader Had a Bad Experience with Martin Kove, Too

A few days ago, Karate Kid and Cobra Kai star Martin Kove bit the arm of a co-star—for god knows what reason—and nearly drew blood. He was booted from a convention after police were called. The co-star did not ultimately press charges, and Kove has since apologized.

Kove was typecast in the ’80s as an action-movie villain, and notwithstanding the incident last weekend, there’s not a lot of dirt out there on the guy, despite a filmography nearly 250 credits long. However, EW has resurfaced an old story from Barry star and SNL alum Bill Hader, from a 2013 appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, that’s amusing and certainly suggests the man may have been an a-hole his entire career.

It was apparently Hader’s first industry-related gig: he was assigned as a driver for Kove back in the late ’90s.

“I’m driving him around in my sh*tty car, and he got me lost on purpose,” Hader told Maron. “He hadn’t read the script yet, so he was like, ‘Nah, you don’t take this. You take Havenhurst. What are you getting on the 405 for?’ And I had like a Thomas Guide on my lap.”

They eventually arrived on set late, and Kove got yelled at and ended up having a “terrible day.” And then, Hader returned to pick him up. “On the way back, we’re driving,” Hader said. “It’s at night, and we’re driving down the freeway. He was like, ‘Bill, are you mad at me?’”

Kove really didn’t want Hader to be mad at him, so he repeatedly offered to buy Hader a cookie or a milkshake. “This is the guy from Karate Kid. This is my first Hollywood experience,” Hader continued. “He goes, ‘There’s a McDonald’s right up here. Pull over, and we’ll get you a cookie. We’ll get a milkshake.’”

Kove got a cookie and a milkshake, but… “He comes back out eating the chocolate cookie and the milkshake. And he just sits in the back and goes, ‘Come on, let’s go,’” Hader said. “It was the biggest f**k you. It was a weird mind f**k of, like, ‘I’m gonna get you this thing,’ and then he ate it in front of me,” Hader said. “And then I just drove home in silence.”

From then on, when Hader drove Kove to and from set, he just sat silently and didn’t say a thing. That said, Hader didn’t hold it against Kove. “He might be a really nice guy, but I just, for some reason, rubbed him the wrong way. I don’t know what was going on.”

Many years later, Vince Mancini—back when he was with Uproxx—asked Kove about it in an interview, and Kove denied the whole thing.

“Total fabrication,” he said. “Not quite clear why he spreads this story. It’s quite uncharacteristic of me to indulge in such a level of being so inconsiderate. I don’t remember him or the event. Maybe he drove me to a set one day, but I really don’t remember him at all. I am truly happy for his success, though. As well as my old friend Henry Winkler’s success.”

Vince also has a couple of other stories about Kove from that interview, recalling his encounter with a “Hollywood blowhard” earlier this week.