Martin Kove apologizes for biting, then kissing, ‘Cobra Kai’ co-star Alicia Hannah-Kim’s arm
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Martin Kove, who stars as John Kreese on “Cobra Kai,” allegedly bit a co-star — hard — on Sunday at a fan convention in Washington state.
Alicia Hannah-Kim, who joined the Netflix series as Kim Da-Eun in the show’s fifth season, was on her way to her booth when she tapped Kove on the shoulder to say hello in an area where the show’s cast was hanging out, according to a Puyallup Police Department report obtained by The Times. Kove’s reaction appears to have shocked her.
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“When Alicia did this Martin Kove suddenly grabbed her arm and bit her upper arm so hard it nearly drew blood, and she yelled out in pain,” an officer who was assigned to VIP security at Washington State Summer Con wrote in the report. “Once Martin Kove finished biting her arm, he grabbed her arm again and began kissing it where he bit her.”
The officer said the actor had a “very noticeable bite mark on her arm that was already turning blue and bruising” when she showed it to him.
Kove issued an apology through a crisis-management PR firm late Tuesday.
“I deeply regret and apologize for my actions regarding the incident with Alicia, a genuinely kind and wonderful person who didn’t deserve to be put in this position,” Kove said in the statement, obtained by Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve always respected her and considered her a highly professional and talented co-worker on Cobra Kai.”
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Kove said he was being “playful in the moment but went too far” and offered no excuse for his behavior. He said he regretted what he’d done and he was committed to learning from it. “I take full responsibility for what I did, and again I apologize to her and her husband.”
When Hannah-Kim, 37, and her husband-handler Sebastian Roche, went to talk to the 78-year-old actor immediately after the incident, Kove “exploded” and said he had done nothing wrong, the report said. That’s when the couple got the police involved.
Kove admitted to the officer that he had bitten his co-star’s arm and said he “did it out of jest” and “thought he was being funny,” the report said.
The officer said in the report that he told Kove that biting Hannah-Kim was illegal and could be investigated as an assault. Kove could potentially be arrested or cited, the officer said.
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Kove said “something to the effect of he said sorry already,” then “appeared to see how serious” the situation was and began to apologize in the officer’s presence.
Bodycam footage from the discussion after the incident, obtained by several outlets, shows Hannah-Kim excoriating Kove and refusing to accept his apology. She described the bite as “felony assault” and said to the actor, “I’m ashamed of your dignity as an 80-year-old man to scream at a lady that you just BIT.”
She added that she was “on the precipice of fury and seeking my own justice, because what you’ve done is assault.”
Hannah-Kim told the officer privately that she did not want to pursue charges but wanted a report filled out in case it happened again. Kove declined the opportunity to file a handwritten statement about what had happened, the report said.
Roche did give a handwritten statement in which he noted that Kove had “resorted to being very angry at us” when he and his wife confronted him about the incident.
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A representative for Kove, who has more than 230 acting credits including “Death Race 2000,” “Wyatt Earp,” “VFW” and the “Karate Kid” movies, did not respond immediately on Tuesday to The Times’ request for comment.
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