Denise Truscello
Entertainment

How 'Cobra Kai' Landed a Carrie Underwood Cameo

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If you binged Cobra Kai Season 4 over New Years weekend, you already know what this is about. If not, proceed with caution because there's spoilers ahead regarding a cameo appearance that's way more fun as a surprise.

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Cobra Kai fan Carrie Underwood appears as herself on the Netflix series to sing Survivor's "The Moment of Truth" (the end credits song from The Karate Kid (1984)) during the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament.

Underwood's presence gets explained away when one of the tournament's hapless organizers reveals that he's the country superstar's husband's dentist. So, Underwood exists in the Miyagi-Do multiverse, and there's a good chance that Mike Fisher does, as well.

"We had this idea that our sometimes bumbling tournament board members would have a lot of big ideas for blowing up the tournament and making it bigger and better," series co-creator Hayden Schlossberg told Decider. "We loved setting up the low expectations of what they're capable of, especially with a history littered with mistakes. There was apparently a Malcolm-Jamal Warner debacle. So we kind of used that as a throwaway to set this up, but we knew we wanted them to have a victory, for Ron specifically, to deliver on the promise that's so much bigger than what he should be capable of."

Underwood's relationship with Cobra Kai all started with a tweet. After praising the series in an Aug. 2020 post, Underwood caught the attention of stars Ralph Macchio (Daniel LaRusso) and William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence). Schlossberg and Josh Heald's co-creator, Jon Hurwitz, welcomed Underwood to the dojo, as well.

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The song choice suits Underwood, a fan of heavy, arena-packing rock 'n' roll from the 1980s.

"We had the idea that it would be 'Moment Of Truth'... but we wanted to tempo it up a little bit and give it a 'You're the Best Around' feel to use it in that sort of way — but put a spin on it because it's a live performance and a surprise performance," Schlossberg told Decider. "[Underwood] was really game. We reached out personally to her through mutual connections and she couldn't have been more excited and more gracious and more willing to get on her tour bus and come down and spend a day with us. It was just a love affair on both sides. She was excited to be working with us; we were excited to be working with her. She worked with our composers in terms of the arrangement and the recording and the mix, and it could not have gone smoother."