Jeff Kay was an assistant director on Cobra Kai, and a dedication to him appears in a season 5 episode. Cobra Kai was a continuation of the Karate Kid franchise, and many fans didn’t know what to think when the show was first announced. A sequel series set far past the events of the films and from the point-of-view of the Karate Kid villain, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), was a unique but possibly polarizing idea. It turned out to be an excellent decision, and Cobra Kai has had five successful seasons with Cobra Kai season 6 on the way.
Season 5, episode 3, “Playing with Fire” from September 9, 2022 sees Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) as the sole owner of Cobra Kai and wanting to expand the dojo. In episode 3, Johnny returns from Mexico to discover Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) is pregnant, and he immediately begins prepping for the arrival of his child. At the same time, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) confronts Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan), who apologizes for his actions in The Karate Kid. The episode then ends on a dedication card that reads, “In Memoriam Jeff Kay 1965-2021”.
Jeff Kay tragically passed away on October 17, 2021 at the age of 56 due to a heart attack (via Cosmopolitan). As assistant director, Kay worked on two season 5 episodes of Cobra Kai, episodes 3 and 5, the former of which is dedicated to him. An AD has a very important role on a film or television set. The first assistant director is kind of a project manager for the day-to-day operations of a set, including making the filming schedule, and determining who should be in what location and when.
During shooting, they direct the crew on set, ensuring the director and actors have everything they need to work. Occasionally a production manager, Kay spent the majority of his career as an AD. In the early years of his career, Kay was a second assistant director but quickly graduated to first assistant director. Kay worked on numerous shows like Numb3rs, Entourage, and American Housewife. His film credits include Gettysburg, Courage Under Fire, and numerous TV movies.
After Jeff Kay’s passing, many of his friends in the industry took to the internet to pay their respects to him as a friend and a vaunted professional. Diedrich Bader, an actor and comedian best known as Rex in Napoleon Dynamite and Bill Ericsson in Veep, posted on X about his friend, whom he met on the set of American Housewife.
Meg Donnelly, an actor from American Housewife, tweeted a video of Kay on of the AD leading a cheer and farewell to the end of filming on one of the show’s sets. From his command of the room, it’s clear many had a lot of respect for Kay.
Nicholas Falacci, a writer on Numb3rs who worked for the show at the same time as Kay posted a heartfelt X tribute to his friend and a glowing endorsement of assistant directors in general.
In the comments of his post, Falacci writes,
Jeff Kay was quite the respected professional by the time he got to the set of Cobra Kai and had managed to leave a lasting impression on everyone he’d worked with, from the actors in front of the camera to the crew behind it.