Road rage, revenge piss, and vandalism: Steven Yeun and Ali Wong on the fury at the center of Beef
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Lee Sung Jin wasn't in a particularly bad mood when, while sitting at a traffic light in Los Angeles some time ago, a man in a white SUV BMW aggressively honked his horn at him for not hitting the gas pedal soon enough after the light had turned green.
"There was a lot of honking, cursing, pulling up next to me, window rolled down, the whole thing, and then he drove off," Lee, a TV writer and director known for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Tuca & Bertie, among others, recalls to EW. Yet, "for some reason I thought, 'Ah, I'm going to follow you.'"
He didn't really have a plan, nor does he generally condone such behavior, "but in my mind, I justified it like, 'I'm just driving home and I happen to be behind him, and if he goes somewhere else, I won't follow him.'" But the two just so happened to have the same commute route, with Lee trailing the man for miles upon miles on the outstretched highway.
"I was chuckling to myself because here I am in my car listening to happy music and driving home, and I'm sure in his mind he's thinking, 'Oh my God, this person's following me,'" he says.
Andrew Cooper/Netflix Steven Yeun in 'Beef'
The incident, or, more specifically, "the idea that we're so trapped in our subjective realities and projecting so many assumptions onto one another," laid the meaty foundation for what would become Beef, Netflix's new dramedy about two strangers — Danny, a struggling contractor (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong), a wealthy self-made entrepreneur — who let a road rage incident burrow deep into their neuroses and unravel their lives.
Revenge pissing, catfishing, and vandalism are among the forms of retribution that the two angrily enact on each other. Amidst the wreckage, Lee expertly marinates themes of mental health, nihilism, and generational trauma into a deeply chaotic and darkly comedic series about the façades we construct.
"Road rage was just kind of a Trojan horse for a wide entry for viewers to look at other themes," Lee says. "For me, that's kind of the main theme that runs in my life: just this empty void that has seemingly always been there, and it's very hard to fill. Even having a show roll out on Netflix doesn't fill it. It's something that I've struggled with for a very long time, and I've only recently learned to just accept it and make it a part of me."
Andrew Cooper/Netflix Ali Wong in 'Beef'
Though his road rage incident involved a middle-aged white male driver, Lee didn't want to explore that particular narrative for Beef, pointing to a more compelling dynamic between Yeun and Wong as nemeses. "It becomes very literal. And especially in the modern era, you kind of almost have to talk about race, which other shows do very well," Lee says. "I didn't particularly want to. It's so well covered."
With Yeun and Wong, "There's just so many more human layers, deeper layers to uncover than just race," he adds. "Identity is part of it, but it's also Steven and Ali as who they are, and they happen to be Asian American. But if they weren't, I still would've worked with them, because their general essence and beings are so perfect for these roles."
Yeun and Wong, both at the top of their games in the series, were on board from minute one. "I remember hearing Sunny go, 'I'm thinking about this road rage thing.' I was like, 'That's it.' And then when Ali came in, it was like, 'That's it.' And then when we started pitching it, people were like, 'That's it.' And then [Wong] came up with the ending and it was like, 'That's it,'" Yeun tells EW. "And it just kept going. There were struggles and difficulties, but there was always a 'That's it.' It felt like what people say about sculpting or carving marble, where you're just uncovering the thing. You're not making it, you're uncovering something."
The trio had a "real shorthand with each other from the beginning and a lot of unspoken understanding," Wong adds. "I trust their tastes so much that I knew that whatever we created would probably be pretty great."
Courtesy of Netflix Steven Yeun and Ali Wong on 'Beef'
The stars had to tap into deep-seated anger to embody Danny and Amy, and have even spoken about breaking out in stress hives after filming wrapped. "It was me on my face and Steven all over his body," Wong says, recalling not just the psychological but physical manifestations of channeling all that rage. Though filming was stressful, the two say they have no real interest in shedding their broken but deeply human counterparts.
"For me, the process of doing this work is less about shedding a character and more about absorbing it into yourself, where it's part of you forever," Yeun says. "And it's a part of you that you've processed and it doesn't control you anymore. You have control over it, or you know how to soothe it, how to be with it. As I continue to get to know Ali and experience putting the show out, there's this process still happening that I'm really enjoying."
Wong agrees. "Our friendship has really evolved since, but also with Sunny and with [executive producer and director] Jake Schreier," she says, noting, too, that Amy is not someone "that I am interested in completely shedding, because I'm so grateful for that experience and what that character taught me about myself."
Rage and imposing themes of existentialism aside, Beef is a comical ride across the television highway, and Yeun and Wong hope passengers are entertained — even when the story unexpectedly veers into dark territory. "The show looks at anger and rage, and there's certainly aspects of that, but to me, it's [more about] resentment," Yeun says. "It's a lot of envy. I think we're all trying to get away from ourselves."
Beef is now streaming on Netflix.
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