Fans of Cowboy Bebop know that bounty hunter Spike Spiegel worships martial arts icon Bruce Lee. He even engages in a little casual kung fu, without breaking a sweat, to disarm Faye Valentine. But is John Cho, the actor who dons Spike’s signature pistol, also influenced by Lee's work? “Sure. I don’t know if it’s possible to grow up as an Asian American and not be familiar with the works of Bruce Lee,” Cho said during an interview on the aftershow Unlocked. Cho described the intense practice and training he put into playing the slick space assassin. “I was careful not to do a bad imitation. I didn’t want to be accused of that,” Cho continued. “I wanted to come from an organic place.”  

Unluckily for bad guys, in both the original anime and the new live-action series, Spike is well-versed in Lee’s swift and fluid fighting style, Jeet Kune Do, which centers around keeping your body movements water-like in order to evade an opponent's oncoming attack. Though Spike Spiegel and Bruce Lee have their own staying power, Cho appreciates the harmony between the martial arts vibe and the space western aesthetic. 

“I like the mishmash of influences [in the anime and live action]. Even with Bruce Lee, I felt like he was taking a lot of things from Western cinema and incorporating it into his films.” 

By channeling the mixed-martial master, Cho imbues the gun-toting Spike with a suaveness that’s evident whenever he lays out an opponent with a swift kick or elbow block.

 “We really had a rhythm going,” Cho said about fight training on set. “The good thing about having a lot of [previsualization] and knowing what you were doing [is] there’s no ‘let’s vibe this out.’ It was really starting with our training and then getting into the physicality and grinding it down... ” 

Cho reflected on how people will receive his version of the classic Spike Spiegel: “Bebop is about absorbing all the stuff that is meaningful to you, expressing itself. I hope that’s what people see.”

We will happily watch John Cho beat up baddies any day.