William Zabka Says Working with Ralph Macchio on Cobra Kai After The Karate Kid Is 'An Honor'

Ralph Macchio and William Zabkaare looking back on decades of friendship, starting with The Karate Kid and continuing through Cobra Kai.

The costars — who lead the hit series, which is now in its fourth season on Netflix — spoke with PEOPLE about their lasting personal and professional bond while attending PaleyFest at The Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Friday.

Macchio, 60, and Zabka, 56, starred in the very first Karate Kid film, which was released in 1984, and reprise their roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, respectively, in Cobra Kai.

"For Billy and I, the depth and level of our friendship and our history together has just gone beyond, just like this show has," Macchio tells PEOPLE of working on Cobra Kai with Zabka. "You're taking the nostalgia, you're taking the source material of what The Karate Kid universe has sort of created, and then defining it in a whole new way, never losing sight of what it really is."

Calling his chemistry with Zabka "magic," Macchio says, "I didn't even expect to be at that level."

"I think we've talked about it, that we've both come from totally different perspectives, walking in the shoes of these guys, connected to this one entity from two different viewpoints that come together, the wisdom that we've gained through it comes to the surface," he says of how he and Zabka have approached their characters.

Looking back on the decades between the Karate Kid films and Cobra Kai — which debuted on YouTube Red in 2018 before moving to Netflix for its third season — Macchio says he and Zabka have both grown.

"As actors, as friends, as men, as fathers, and husbands, we have grown," he tells PEOPLE. "And it's just so wonderful to think that these two bows have created this great kinship. And on top of that, they can't get out of their own way, the characters, and that's what keeps the ball up in the air."

RELATED VIDEO: Ralph Macchio Says Nostalgia for 'Karate Kid' Has Never Gone Away: "It's Just Incredible"

Zabka also shares his experience with PEOPLE, saying he and Macchio were friends while filming The Karate Kid as "two actors thrown together."

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"A director picked both of us out [of] the universe and threw us in the same canvas. And then the movie exploded and turned into a classic," he says. "Over the years, Ralph and I had seen each other, we'd bumped into each other at different festivals and this and that, [a] memorial for [The Karate Kid star] Pat Morita."

As their friendship "rekindled," Zabka notes, he and Macchio both appeared on How I Met Your Mother, as well as "a few other projects."

Zabka says he was approached first about Cobra Kai, explaining, "I think it was safer to get me and then tell Ralph … So it was very nice when it came full circle and both of us took it very seriously and took a hard look at it."

"We've been blessed to revisit these characters in this narrative and the franchise," he says of working on Cobra Kai. "So it's great, we're having a great time."

As for how he and Macchio have changed since filming The Karate Kid decades ago and returning to the same universe with Cobra Kai, Zabka tells PEOPLE, "We both have lives since The Karate Kid, we both have families, we [have] both done our careers and all that. We're now grown up men who really get what's going on and it's very exciting. It's quite an honor."

Cobra Kai will return for a fifth season on Netflix.