‘Beef’ creator and Emmy nominee Lee Sung Jin: ‘To be recognized by our peers is the best thing’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“Beef” creator and three-time Emmy nominee Lee Sung Jin calls fellow show director and executive producer Jake Schreier one of his “closest friends.” So it’s probably no surprise the pair have engaged in some “friendly ribbing” after the 2023 Emmy nominations were announced in July. Lee and Schreier are competing against each other in Directing for a Limited Or Anthology Series Or Movie, meaning the longtime pals are now temporary rivals.
“It’s all love, though, because he is so talented. I sought him out for ‘Beef’ because everything I know about directing, I’ve pretty much either learned from movies or from him,” Lee tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “I’m so glad that he’s getting the recognition that he deserves. But yeah, you know, we’re both competitive. Is there a little part of me that is going to be a little bit happier if I win? Sure. But truly, it would be a W regardless.”
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Lee’s admiration for his “Beef” team runs deep – and that high regard was clearly reciprocated by the Television Academy. The Netflix show landed 13 total Emmy nominations – tied with “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” for most nominations in the limited series race – including Best Limited Series. (Both Lee and Schreier are nominated there as executive producers, so they don’t need to compete in that category.)
“Our cast and crew worked so hard on it, and to be recognized by our peers is the best thing,” Lee says.
Created and largely written by Lee, who is also an Emmy nominated for writing the show’s first episode, “Beef” focuses on a pair of strangers, Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong), whose lives are forever altered after an ill-fated road-rage incident. Over the course of the show’s 10 episodes, Danny and Amy wage psychological warfare on each other, a battle that all but culminates in their mutual destruction. Both Yeun and Wong are Emmy nominees for their acclaimed performances, as are supporting actors Joseph Lee and Young Mazino and supporting actress Maria Bello.
“Our supporting cast was incredible. If it were up to me, I wish everyone was nominated,” Lee says. With Joseph Lee and Mazino, two relative newcomers hailed as breakout stars, Lee says he was most impressed with how they both handled the nuanced tone of his writing.
“Especially, for a first-year show, you’re not really sure what the tone is. You can kind of tell off the page, but still, it’s a hard thing to decipher,” Lee says. “They just got it. They intuitively knew what was funny about those characters. You can’t lean too hard into the comedic aspects of their personality or it starts getting really broad. Joe, for example, his character George is almost like a puppy dog and naive, but you don’t want to overdo that or it starts to become a different reality than the one the rest of the characters are in.”
SEEJake Schreier interview: ‘Beef’ director
Of Mazino, who plays Danny’s brother, Paul, Lee adds, “That character Paul is so funny to me, but so much of it is the little things – the way he mumbles, the tension between him wanting to be seen, but then also his self-doubt that has been…. It is really awesome to see how all the actors just kind of got it intuitively and delivered every day on set.”
Lee has written for a number of shows and landed a previous Emmy nomination as a producer on “Silicon Valley.” But the “Beef” finale is the first time he’s ever directed one of his projects.
“I would have loved to direct it more. But just it was mostly time,” he says of his experience on “Beef.” “I hadn’t finished all the scripts when we get started production. I think the studio [A24] and network, rightfully, were extremely worried that I had too much going on. So I wanted to be able to wait till the end.” Lee says watching Schreier and fellow director Hikari helped him find the “footing of our show” and were key in his success as a first-time director.
“Spending the most time I could with those training wheels set me up for success,” he adds.
“Beef” is a limited series and has a definitive ending for Danny and Amy, but Lee says it could live on in the future. His initial pitch for the show was as an anthology series with other “beefs” lined up in potential later seasons.
“I’m kind of open to it all,” he says now, noting that everything remains in a holding pattern due to the current writers’ strike and the impasse between writers and the studios. “I do really love the world that Season 1 created, I love Danny and Amy and all the supporting cast, so I’d be down to explore that – and I’d be down to explore new beefs.”
“Beef” is streaming on Netflix.
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