Every so often a movie or television show comes along with so many twists and turns that it makes it inherently hard to discuss without revealing important spoilers. In some ways, Lee Sung Jin’s critically acclaimed new dramedy “Beef,” is one of those programs (so, in this regard, is “Dead Ringers” arriving in a few weeks). But the Ali Wong and Steven Yeun dramedy is too good not to take the opportunity to speak with its creator and showrunner, Jin, before it debuts on Netflix this week.
After the first episode, “Beef” seems to center on a struggling handyman Danny (Yeun) who becomes obsessed with tracking down the owner of a white SUV after a road rage incident in a Southern California parking lot. That owner turns out to be Amy (Wong), a successful horticulturist who is focused on selling her upscale plant business to an out-of-touch billionaire (Maria Bello) and couldn’t care less about Danny’s hurt ego. As the series moves forward both characters make dramatic choices that fundamentally change their lives and can mostly be traced back to that initial incident. A moment that happens to have been inspired by a real event that occurred to Jin himself.
A writer on shows such as “Silicon Valley,” “Tuca & Bertie,” and “Dave,” Jin knew he had an original idea to work with after his own road rage incident which occurred on the always busy 10 freeway in Hollywood.
“There was a white SUV, much like the show, but it was a BMW, not a Benz. He honked at me, rolled down his window, cursed at me, and pulled up next to me. He was very threatening and then drove off,” Jin recalls. “For some reason on this day, I was like, ‘I’m going to follow you.’ Thankfully, it didn’t end anything like the show. But in my mind, I justified it like, ‘I’m just commuting home, and I happened to be behind you.’ I started thinking maybe in his mind he was like, ‘Oh my God, this person’s following me for so long.’ That’s what the kernel was, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re so trapped in our subjective views of reality and we’re projecting all these assumptions onto the other person. There might be something here.’ That was the initial thing. So, I’m very thankful for that driver. I wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t honked at me. Whoever you are, thank you.”
Over the course of our interview, there are decidedly no spoilers, but we reflect on the contributions of Yeun and Wong, a mother character that hits close to home, the depiction of the Korean Church community, how viewers should interpret the ending, and much, much more.
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The Playlist: Do you remember what your log line was when you pitched this idea to Netflix?
Lee Sung Jin: I mean, honestly, with the first person I told this story about to was with was Ravi Nandan at A24, the head of television over there. It wasn’t even really a pitch. I was just telling him about this road rage incident I had gotten into. I was like, “I think there’s something interesting here.” And he’s like, “Yes, you absolutely need to dig further into this.” So, it was through his encouragement that I started to flesh out these characters more. Yeah. And then, with Stephen and Ali, it was similar. I didn’t really have an elevator pitch. I just sort of riff on what happened to me.
And then, when we took it out, there was no two-sentence thing. I gave a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation pitching the whole season with Photoshop storyboards, and a lot of the music you hear in the show was in the pitch. Yeah, I try to leave as little to the imagination as possible to the buyer. I don’t know that I’ve ever really tried to summarize the show in two sentences because it’s really hard. Yeah.
That’s why I asked because it’s one of those shows where it’s almost impossible. But I was actually unaware of this road rage incident that inspired it. Was it in the Valley like in the show?
It was actually in Hollywood, close to here actually. I was coming home from work and was getting on the 10. And there was a white SUV, much like the show, but it was a BMW, not a Benz. He honked at me, rolled down his window, cursed at me, and pulled up next to me. He was very threatening and then drove off. For some reason on this day, I was like, “I’m going to follow you.” Thankfully, it didn’t end anything like the show. But in my mind, I justified it like, “I’m just commuting home, and I happened to be behind you.” I started thinking maybe in his mind he was like, “Oh my God, this person’s following me for so long.” That’s what the kernel was, I was like, “Oh, we’re so trapped in our subjective views of reality and we’re projecting all these assumptions onto the other person. There might be something here.” That was the initial thing. So, I’m very thankful for that driver. I wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t honked at me. Whoever you are, thank you.
You had this initial idea and you decided to riff with it. Were other ideas in the series that you’d been wanting to put on the page for a while? Were there ideas about Ali and Steven’s characters and their sort of journeys you’d had in your head?
I think the themes, I definitely wanted to explore for some time. Just the existential void that is in a lot of us and how nothing seems to ever last and it’s so hard to fill. That’s something I’ve really wanted to explore for quite some time because I deal with that every day. The Korean church, I’ve really wanted to explore. Steven and I have been friends for years, and we had actually talked a lot about, “Oh, is there a way to ever put the Korean church in something,” because we grew up in the Korean church. I don’t go anymore, but it’s such a part of my childhood and upbringing, and I have so many nostalgic memories associated with it that I had never found the perfect vehicle for it. But I really love how it turned out in the show. It felt very honest. We’re not lampooning it, but we’re also not glorifying it, and just trying to really capture how it felt for us when we attended.
Had you thought about Steven and even Ali while you were writing it?
Yeah. I mean, because we sold it as a pitch, yeah. Steven, he attached pretty quickly. Ali, I had known from “Tuca & Bertie.” We had worked together. So yeah, having them on as EPs early on was so helpful. Their fingerprints are all over the DNA of the show because when I’m working on the pitch at midnight, I can text any of them and be like, “Hey, I’m kind of stuck on this beat. What do you think your character would do?” We can start riffing for a little bit. I mean, that happened from day one of coming up with a pitch to the end of shooting, was just this constant back and forth between Steve and Ali, and myself. Having them be a part of the creative process was paramount.
Was there one thing that you could pinpoint and say Ali contributed this, Steven contributed this, about their characters, or a specific moment without being too spoiler-ish?
Yeah. On Ali’s side, in the pilot, without getting spoilery, there was a very big scene with a gun. That was something where we were trying to come up with something for the pitch. I knew that Amy is so repressed. I wanted Amy to have something, her secret thing, that her oppression is kind of seeping out to. We were pitching on some stuff. It all felt a little forced. We were actually discussing our love for “The Sopranos.” There’s that scene, I think in season three, where Richie Aprile (David Porval) is having sex with Janice (Aida Turturro), and there there’s a gun involved. So, Ali started riffing on that. It was through that conversation that that idea came about. And then, Steven too, we talked a lot about our Korean church experience, and I was like, “Hey, did you stay after service? Did you have a Taylor VII series guitar that you played? Because I did. And then, you’re trying to flex on everyone singing secular songs.” He’s like, “Oh my God, I did that too.” I was like, “Did you sing Incubus?” He’s like, “Oh, I sang ‘Drive’ all the time.” And so, that’s what led to us putting Incubus in the show. The way we put it in the show is pretty much spot on to how we were in our high school experience.
Was it tough to get it cleared?
I mean, our music supervisor, Tiffany Andrews, was really fantastic. I mean, there were so many songs I had written into the outline, even an outline stage. As a writer, you put that in and you assume you’re not going to get it, but every single song I put in, we were able to get. And so, it’s very rare, and I don’t think that’ll ever happen again. But yeah, very fortunate for the music in the show, because I truly love every song in the show.
Amy’s mother-in-law, Fumi, is she based on your own mother by any chance?
Those are just spawn from a lot of conversations with Ali especially, and some people in the writer’s room. I think it’s an amalgamation of a lot of people’s friend’s mothers. There are little details. In the pilot, Fumi actually, in the kitchen, she’s eating a Go-Gurt. That is because Ali was telling me about some of the mothers that she knew growing up, some of the Japanese mothers that she knew, and she was saying how some of them didn’t really care about the taste of food. They just cared about the convenience and the cleanliness and the ease of eating. I was like, “Oh, that’s so specific.” And I’m like, “Would Go-Gurt fall into that category?? She was like, “Yes.” And so, that was just a small little texture that we added, because it just felt so real to life.
I think one of the things that’s so great about this show is all the characters have a genuine depth to them. None of them are sort of one note. And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a character in media or film that reminded me so much of my own mom. Especially the note about hiding the financial problems from your kids in such a specific way. I literally feel like I’m wasting my time with the interview, but you should know this. She said it exactly as my own mother has done with my sister and me.
That’s amazing. It’s always really nice to hear that people are connecting to it in a real way because that was the north star for us as writers, was just we wanted nothing to feel contrived, that this all felt truly based on what real people do. You’re right, I’m sure there are mothers all over the world who can’t quite express things in the healthiest of manners. So yeah, we were always trying to put ourselves in those shoes. Thank you for sharing that.
Of course. You talk about the fact that you had a 45-minute pitch when you were presenting the show. Did you plot out additional seasons? I will not give anything away about what happens at the end, but it is not a limited series in many ways. It is a little slightly open-ended. Is that fair to say, at the end?
We actually pitched it as a limited, and there is sort of a close-ended finality to that end. But I deeply love Danny and Amy as characters, so I’m not opposed to the story continuing. But by design, it was truthfully pitched as a close-ended thing, but we’ll see what happens.*
*considering the show is competing in the Comedy Series instead of Limited Series categories, we hope someone told Netflix this
O.K., in that context, without giving anything away, did you want them to use their own imagination about what happened next?
Yes. I did want people to interpret the ending however they wanted really, or wherever people are at. I feel like people are going to bring different things to the ending. I knew the mood I wanted to leave people with, and just this feeling of closure slash finding home, so to speak. What happens next, I’m curious as well. I would love to know what Danny and Amy do next. But yeah, it was always by design to leave it open to interpretation. I mean, I know “The Soprano’s” ending is very divisive, but I love how open-ended that one is.
This is the first series you’ve completely show run yourself. What was the toughest part about it, and what was the most rewarding part of it?
The toughest part about it is the time. You just never have enough time. And so, we’re just scrambling. We’re shooting seven, eight pages a day. Just the pace of it is quite nuts. But the best part of it really is the relationships you form. Everyone says this, but I really can’t stress enough how incredible our cast and crew were, not only in their craft but just as people. You can’t go through hardships without having just good humans around to help you feel less alone, which is I guess the meaning of “Beef.” I mean, Steven, Ali, Jake Schreier, Grace Yun, our production designer, I can name more names, but that squad, that core group, I hope to be making things with them for a very long time, because there’s nothing better than going through something with your friends. So yeah, that was the best part.
“Beef” launches on Netflix this Friday.
