Cowboy Bebop was a role John Cho was born to play, which is why replacing him after his injury was out of the question

io9

“You’ve seen him in comedies. You’ve seen him in dramas. The guy can do anything,” says co-writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach in an interview with io9. “To see John Cho bring his wonderful mastery of acting to this character, and then also to see the level of physical preparation that he’s done for this, is stunning.” Grillo-Marxuach first met Cho when the actor appeared as a ghost in a 1998 episode of Charmed that Grillo-Marxuach wrote. Since then, Grillo-Marxuach says he's long wanted to see Cho as the lead in a big-budget project. Cho is still recovering from his knee injury he suffered on-set last October. Meanwhile, Grillo-Marxuach and his team are working on Season 2. Grillo-Marxuach adds that his fellow co-writer "Chris Yost and I wrote this on a notecard and tacked it up to our whiteboard in the room. His motto for Spike Spiegel was always: Spike Spiegel is super f*cking cool. Is he tortured? Yes. Does he have a lot of tragedy in his backstory? Yes. Is he somebody who’s not the most sort of effusive with his emotions kind of guy? Yes, you know this. But he’s super f*cking cool. So, I think more than anything else, Spiegel’s super f*cking cool. John brings that to it in spades.”