“What the fuck is happening?”
That was Steven Yeun’s reaction while shooting the cataclysmic climax of “Beef,” which he leads with Ali Wong. The Netflix and A24 dramedy opens plausibly enough with a road-rage scene between Wong’s Amy, an entrepreneur whose easygoing nature masks secret desires, and Yeun’s Danny, a contractor who goes to extremes to obtain what he wants. But that initial conflict drives both to exact bizarre acts of revenge on each other, revealing the darkest corners of their psyches. The result? Chaos. In one scene, Amy masturbates with a gun; in another, Danny urinates all over her bathroom — and that’s just the beginning. Seeded throughout are quiet explorations of the characters’ anger, loneliness and fear.
“Both assume incorrectly that they cannot show their true selves to anyone in their lives,” says Lee Sung Jin, the creator and showrunner of “Beef,” which premieres on April 6. “Part of the reason they’re drawn to each other is they can feel this other person is as broken and messy as they are.”
The show marks another live-action TV role for Yeun, who broke out with his turn as Glenn Rhee in “The Walking Dead” and made history when he became the first Asian American Oscar nominee for lead actor with 2020’s “Minari.” A notable stand-up comedian who’s starred in films such as “Always Be My Maybe,” Wong tackles her first major dramatic role in “Beef,” which features a predominantly Asian cast that includes Young Mazino, Joseph Lee, David Choe and Patti Yasutake. But Lee, who wrote for Netflix animated sitcom “Tuca & Bertie” and will pen Marvel’s upcoming “Thunderbolts,” says that while the “characters happen to be Asian American, there’s so much more to them than just that.”
He originally conceived the leads as an Asian man and a “Stanley Tucci type,” before replacing that character with Amy. “I abandoned the Stanley Tucci type very quickly because especially in the modern era, you have to talk about race, and there’s so many other shows that do that very well,” Lee says. “I didn’t have much interest, nor the capabilities, to write about that.” If Wong were another race, he notes, he still would have wanted to work with her, but the fact that she is Asian American helps “because it allows for so many other doors to open, and for us to explore other themes” without having to “address the card of race, which would take up a sizable amount of narrative real estate.”
A clue to the series’ thematic North Star lies in the final episode’s title, “Figures of Light.” “‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,’” Lee says, quoting Carl Jung by heart. “That is ultimately what this show is about.”
As for Yeun and Wong, the two voiced characters together on “Tuca & Bertie,” but “Beef” marks their first in-person collaboration. Wong jokes that she was nervous about the prospect. “I didn’t know what kind of actor Steven was. I didn’t know if he was going to throw a doughnut at my head.” (He didn’t.) “He’s loving and sweet between takes.” What surprised her more was discovering that her co-star smokes. Yeun says he “forced [Joseph Lee, who plays Amy’s husband George] to sneak cigarettes with me in between takes.”
“So sneaky!” Wong interjects. “I didn’t even know about that. I didn’t even know that you smoked cigarettes until recently, and I was like”— here, she gasps.
“I don’t!” Yeun protests. “It’s just in between takes.”
“I really didn’t know that you smoked cigarettes until I saw you at Monarch!”
“I don’t!”
Joseph Lee steps in. “I’m the devil on his shoulder,” he says, cutting into Yeun’s and Wong’s banter with a calmness not unlike his own character’s demeanor. George emanates a grating “good vibes only” philosophy borne from his privileged upbringing; he’s a nepotism baby by way of his famous artist father. Fundamentally unable to understand his wife’s darker compulsions, he secludes himself in a continually self-reaffirming bubble that runs opposite Amy’s pragmatism.
In real life, Lee himself is also a visual artist. Yeun first introduced him to Wong at one of her standup shows in Los Angeles, where Lee took photos of her from backstage.
“I was like, ‘What are you doing, man?’” Wong says. “Then Steven was like, ‘He’s a portrait artist, you should look him up on Instagram.’” She ended up buying one of his pieces, a triptych of a boy blowing a ship into a bottle.
The other main supporting actor is Young Mazino, who plays Danny’s nerdy, aimless and jacked younger brother, Paul. Mazino drew inspiration for the character from his friend’s younger brother, whom he describes as a “huge gamer” who “keeps to himself.”
“Internally and emotionally, he feels like he’s still a little kid,” Mazino says. “He still feels like he’s not where he wants to be. I tried to emphasize that in his posture and his body language.”
He and Yeun played basketball together to bond.
“He whupped my ass,” Yeun says, then uses the sport to qualify their characters’ relationship. “Danny’s gonna keep feeding Paul in post and make him do all the work — then take the final shot for the glory.”
All storylines converge into full-blown catastrophe in the penultimate episode, the filming of which, Yeun recalls, sparked a sense of spontaneous combustion. “There was this ramp-up that happens in the reality that you as [an actor] are also becoming aware of,” he says, “that just escalates to a point where you’re like, ‘I didn’t foresee this.’
“It was just this explosion,” Yeun adds. “Like, ‘this is crazy! Shit!’”
