Steven Yeun Collides With His Own Past for 'Beef' (2024)

Steven Yeunwould have deep phone conversations with his friend Lee Sung Jin from time to time, when one day Lee brought up a theme that made Yeun’s ears perk up: road rage.

“There’s just something about road rage,” Yeun tellsLittle Gold Men,“and when we got into it, it was that Spider-Man meme of a Spider-Man pointing at another Spider-Man.”

Yeun and Lee (who goes by Sonny) spent about a year talking about this project, with deep conversations that roamed all the way from road rage to God. Eventually, it becameBeef, Netflix’s pressure cooker of a dark comedy-drama that centers on a man named Danny Cho (Yeun) who gets into a road rage incident with a stranger (Ali Wong), and the two engage in a dangerously escalating game of revenge.

Yeun and Wong were also executive producers on the series along with the creator, Lee, imbuing the story with personal touches from their own histories, like Lee’s and Yeun’s experiences at the Korean church. The critically acclaimed series is already garnering Emmy buzz (it’s competing as a limited series), especially for Yeun and Wong’s explosive performances. Here, Yeun talks about how playing Danny forced him to explore shame, if there’s more of Danny’s story to tell, and what has led him to a string of phenomenal onscreen performances inNope, Minari, Burning, and more.

Vanity Fair: The chemistry between you and Ali Wong is key in this story working. Did the two of you know each other well before filming this?

Steven Yeun: We knew each other, I guess just being Asian Americans in the business. I was onWalking Dead when her first special came out, and I remember watching it in my trailer and being so blown away. I immediately DMed her on Twitter and was like, “You're so great. Thank you for holding it down.” Then we just kind of briefly met here and there. We worked onTuca and Birdie together, but we never really got to see each other consistently. So when we were building up to do this show, it just kind of felt right from the very get and we didn't have to do a lot of chemistry things. If anything, we just had to remind each other, not explicitly but like through hanging out on set, that we actually like each other so that when we got on set and had to say the words that were written, we could just go there because we felt safe.

The character that was going to be opposite Danny wasoriginally supposed to be a Stanley Tucci-kind of character before Ali came on. How did it being Ali change how you approached Danny?

It made Danny a little bit more flawed. For me personally, it became more difficult in a way to reason with someone like Danny, who would just go at it with Ali like that. When you're punching up, it's very clear, you feel justified. But with Ali there's so many aspects —especially between men and women — that feel like you could be punching up, you could be punching down, you could be misunderstanding each other. There's so many complex things at work that everybody just kind of becomes more gnarly.

Since you were a part of this project before scripts were even written, what was most difficult about creating Danny?

This reflects a lot of my larger process as an actor is you're usually trying to deduce who someone outside of yourself, which usually leaves them in a lot of judgment. You've kind of made an archetype or an understanding of who you think this person is. You've said, “Oh, this is this guy. He's broken, he's fucked up, he's kind of shitty. He does reprehensible things. He's not evolved.” And then you have to say, “oh, I'm gonna play that guy.” I think the difficulty was facing the inherent shame of someone like that and in turn then having to face your own shame about whether you can really empathize with someone like this and really understand their position. That was tough at first, and it continues to be tough. That's the difficulty of shame.

For me, I felt like we were playing with aspects of ourselves, not explicitly Ali and me, but more as human beings. Who are we and what are we on a daily basis? Are we just like a performance every day or are we being honest and truthful about how we feel, and how we feel wronged or how we feel unsupported by society or reality?

Was this character at all inspired by people in your real life or did you take inspiration from things you observe?

Part of it was the Venn diagram that Sonny and I share of our experience growing up. We're both non-coastal Korean Americans who grew up in the Korean church and so there were a lot of archetypes to mine. But then, you look at your old friends or your family that you've kind of left in judgment and there's also that feeling of tender, warm love that you have for them too, in their broken humanity. We were just kind of mining from all aspects of people we know, parts of ourselves.

Speaking of being raised in the Korean church, I've seen lots of people posting on social media and saying thatthat scene where Danny breaks down in the church is such a specific experience they’ve never seen so accurately captured before. What was that like filming for you?

It was all the feelings. I relate to that experience. We shot all the band, and the background actors — they were also people from the Korean church too, who resonated with that experience. I remember I was supposed to cry and I remember coming in to watch them do this praise song, and I was like, “Ooh, I feel it. I think it's gonna be a good scene. I think we're gonna get it.” And they turned the cameras onto me, and asked everybody else to be quiet because we need it for sound. So everybody isolated me and I tried to get there, and I couldn't. A younger me would've panicked and just blasted through it and come with up with something, but I realized that something was wrong, so I asked for a break.

I came back and I realized that it's because everybody stopped singing. The inherent purpose of praise or the group experience of singing, whether it be praise music or live concert, is that you can lose yourself. You don't have to hang on to your identity so hard. Danny's personal story is bleak, the one he tells himself, and I think in being able to let that go for a second, there's gotta be such a deep catharsis to that. So when I asked the background actors if they could all sing, then it was like, boom.

Their story ends at such an interesting place. Did you, Sonny and Ali talk about what happens to them after this show? I know Sonny has talked about a three season arc.

We haven't talked about it too extensively. I think from the very get, the way we pitched this was as an anthology limited series. So we did want to close that loop at the end. Certainly there's more that Danny could go through. I think there's so many places it could go that it almost feels impossible to narrow it down to one.

They went through so much in one season.

Yea, and on a human level, the journey doesn't stop there because you've come to some understanding. It is a continual practice to be alive. Maybe this is an origin story, who knows?

The three of you released a statement after hearing the reaction to David Choe being a part of the series. What was that process like for you?

Personally for me, I don't really care to go too much into that aspect of the show. Talking about the show is most important, but I think for us, we didn't want to leave people in mystery. We wanted to say what we wanted to say and the statement was pretty complete for us.

I think you have incredible taste. In just the past few years you’ve been inSorry To Bother You, Okja, Burning,__Nope__and nowBeef. What is your secret to saying yes to a script?

I don't have any secrets. I am incredibly fortunate that I find myself being in positions where scripts that I didn't know existed, or stories that I didn't know existed, or directors that I didn't know knew me approach me. So, I have to lead with that I’ve had a lot of luck. But for me, the thing that I always gravitate towards is “is the story trying to say something?” I don't even mean like, is it trying to teach something? I don't really care to teach anything. Is it trying to reflect something off of our society or off of something that I believe. I think every script thus far that I've said yes to had something that deeply resonated with me.

You're mentioning how people are coming to you now with their stories. When did it feel like that opportunity really opened up for you?

I think for me it was director Bong [Joon-ho]. He really took a chance on me with [his character inOkja] K and I feel so grateful to him because he saw me when a lot of people didn't see me. Even myself, really.

I think there were people that maybe were open to me, but I had to also have space and openness for them by saying no to a couple of the things that came right afterWalking Dead. Let's be honest here: it wasn't like 10, 15, 20 things. It was like, “do you want to play like a tech CIA agent on the run?” And I was like, “no. I don't.” If anything,The Walking Deadafforded me the ultimate privilege in feeling financially secure, amongst many other things. I'm very grateful for that experience for sure.

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