John Cho and showrunner Andre Nemec discuss how they translated the beloved anime into live-action.
Well,hewasn’t.
“People were texting me, ‘FYI, your hair is trending on Twitter.’
John Cho struts his stuff as space cowboy Spike Spiegel in Netflix’s live-action ‘Cowboy Bebop.'.KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX
“After multiple texts, I looked and literally it was trending on Twitter.
I couldn’t believe it.
I have no idea how to feel about it.”
Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black on ‘Cowboy Bebop’.Nicola Dove/Netflix
“I promise we will never take the original anime away from the purists.
It will always exist out there,” Nemec says.
“But I’m very excited about the stories that we’re telling.
John Cho as Spike Spiegel in ‘Cowboy Bebop.'.Kirsty Griffin/Netflix
“We got under the skin of who the live-action characters were going to be,” he adds.
I think to just redo the anime will leave an audience hungry for something that they already saw.
The anime did an amazing job.
We don’t need to serve the exact same meal.
I think it would have been disappointing if we did.”
Cho let the anime guide him in many ways.
But translating a character from something like anime is always a difficult task.
Pixar films, he says, “really animate the hell out of faces and gestures.”
With anime, he was impressed by how artists rendered “natural phenomena,” like wind and rain.
“At some point you have to play the scenes that are written.
The hair is one of those elements pulled directly from the anime.
And a wig was out of the question.
“I just really disliked the idea of a wig.
Have you ever worn one?
I’m just so aware of wigs,” Cho says.
“I said, ‘I really want it to be my own hair.’
It was a kind of a struggle to grow it out.
It went through some really awkward phases.”
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