Pat Morita's Baywatch Hijinks

The cast of Baywatch Hawaii has had its hands full this season ever since Pat Morita came on board as a semi-regular. And the puckish Pat confesses to TV Guide Online that he actually gets a kick out of teasing the show's babes and hunks with his backstage antics.

"I'm kind of a goofball on the set," says the veteran actor, best known as the wise teacher Miyagi in the Karate Kid movies and as Arnold on TV's Happy Days. Recently, he playfully tried to throw off one of his fellow Baywatch actors (he won't say who) by doing a scene with his shirt tail sticking out of his fly. "I just wanted to see how his periphery was," he says with a laugh. "He was a trooper. He didn't crack up until they said 'cut.' And then he wanted to slap me around a little bit."

Morita's role as the grumpy father of Kekoa (Stacy Kamano) is quite a departure for the affable actor, who's still stopped on the street regularly by fans wanting to hear his famous Happy Days laugh. Still, he's having a ball working with sexy Stacy. "She's a real find," he says of his TV daughter. "Not only pretty, but I think she has an enormous future as an actress. She can cry on cue now and wipe it away and go for two more takes!"

Morita's still appearing in movies — he recently starred in the independent film The Boys of Sunset Ridge — and says he'd be game for another Karate Kid movie. In fact, he still keeps in touch with The Kid himself, Ralph Macchio. "We call each other two or three times a year," he says. "He still calls me Pops."