‘Beef’ Fans Blast Netflix for Casting David Choe After Rape Claim Resurfaces: ‘They Deserve Whatever Fallout They’re Getting’

Sharon Knolle
Updated ·5 min read
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After a 2014 video of “Beef” actor David Choe in which he said he forced himself on a masseuse was shared to Twitter, fans of the Netflix series blasted the streamer and creator Lee Sung Jin.

Leads Steven Yuen and Ali Wong — who are friends with Choe and reached out to him to be in the series — were also slammed, with Wong setting her Twitter account to private.

“Beef” has been burning up the Netflix charts since it premiered on April 6, but now fans are swearing off the series. On Twitter, viewers have called for the show to be “tanked,” and “torched” and that it “absolutely deserves to go down.”

The video, which was posted by Center for Investigative Reporting writer, Aura Bogado was taken down by Twitter after Choe’s complaint about a copyright violation, Bogado said on Sunday.

The star of “The Choe Show” on Hulu plays Isaac, cousin of Yuen’s character, on the black comedy series about a road rage incident that spirals out of control. In a 2014 episode of his now-defunct podcast DVDASA called “Erection Quest,” Choe boasted that he was a “successful rapist,” after forcing a masseuse to give him oral sex, according to Buzzfeed. “The thrill of possibly going to jail, you know, that’s what achieved the erection quest,” is quoted as saying in the clip. He referred to the incident as “rapey behavior.”

After the initial backlash in 2014, Choe released a statement insisting that he is “not a rapist”: “I am an artist and a storyteller and I view my show DVDASA as a complete extension of my art… If I am guilty of anything, it’s bad storytelling in the style of douche… I’m sorry if anyone believed that the stories were fact. They were not!”

“I will not be finishing the show #BEEFNetflix even if he ‘made this story up.’ David Choe is a vile human being for thinking raping a Black woman is a joke. I [heart] Ali Wong, but I’m out,” read a tweet by @naturallyfabu.


“If it’s a “history”, then the folks responsible shouldn’t have cast him. They deserve whatever fallout they’re getting,” wrote @BlatantFrankism.

Execs knew about his past and still hired him so the whole thing can be torched as far as I’m concerned,” tweeted Phatriona Gray.

“They’re getting exactly what they deserve for hiring him in the first place and then ignoring this whole situation. None of them have spoken out and Ali Wong made her Twitter account private. They need to acknowledge this,” wrote @ValeWolf

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“Beef absolutely deserves to go down. Lee Sung Jin, Steven Yeun, and Ali Wong deserve some serious flack for such an outrageous casting decision AND their continued silence,” tweeted @alyakc.

“The thing is, Steven Yuen and Ali Wong knew about this and still casted him. The show deserves to be tanked bc this is not how i want asam [Asian American] representation,” wrote Kurtis Wu.

The nonprofit organization Freedom of the Press shared Bogado’s tweet about Twitter removing the video and wrote, “Abuse of copyright takedown procedures to censor journalists is a serious and growing problem. It’s also a preview of a post Section 230 world where platforms fearing liability for user posts remove anything even alleged to be defamatory.”

Choe and Netflix did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment. TheWrap has also reached out to Netflix and Lee Sung Jin.

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