You Don't Want Any Beef With Joseph Lee

This story contains major spoilers for BEEF.

Have you ever wanted to see Steven Yeun downing four Burger King chicken sandwiches in one sitting? How about Ali Wong pointing a gun at her phone? Well, your highly specific wishes have been granted. BEEF, Netflix and A24's new series from Lee Sung Jin, serves up unhinged energy, creative cursing, Incubus covers, and so much more. Of course, BEEF features standout turns from Yeun—who plays Danny Cho, a struggling contractor—and Wong as Amy Lau, an entrepreneur who keeps up a seemingly perfect facade for her family.

By the end of the series, though, it might just be Joseph Lee's George Nakai—Lau's loving husband—who is BEEF's true breakout, as a sculptor struggling with an identity crisis of his own. "Ultimately, he's somebody that doesn't have a firm grasp of his own identity," Lee, 35, tells me over Zoom. "He struggles to find his own sense of masculinity. He's not able to have strong boundaries with the people around him. Throughout the show, you see him struggling to navigate trying to form those boundaries for the first time."

Considering George's big moment in the season finale, we had to ask Lee about all of it: our favorite moments from the show, the lowdown on the "celebration of chairs," a certain hospital-bed scene, and his perspective on BEEF's unrelenting existential questions.

ESQUIRE: As soon as I started watching BEEF, I was like, This guy is going to piss me off. What did you think about George when you first read the script?

JOSEPH LEE: Everything you said is completely understandable and valid. When I first read the script, I just saw this childlike purity for the things that he loves, his art, and his family. He's unafraid to show that love. I felt like I was reconnecting with a lot of those childhood impulses to put on a smile and be joyous—and to not judge myself in my own love for my family. And to be goofy about it. So it was very liberating to play George in that way.

Every character on the show struggles with their own rage. How do you think George deals with his rage?

Not in a healthy way. He's somebody that's so cemented in creating his veneer and facade. That's manifested in a way where he's had to suppress all of his rage, his own identity, his own needs to exist in this world. By human nature, you can only suppress that for so long before it explodes.

I found it so refreshing the way that BEEF captured these characters—who were very Asian American—but they are struggling with things that all human beings have conflict with, like inequality and societal expectations.

I have to credit [BEEF's showrunner] Sonny [Lee Sung Jin]. He's done such an incredible job. When it comes to a lot of art, the more personal you can get, the more universal it becomes. Sonny has taken it one level deeper in showing how these things are informed by culture and class—and how it manifests in good and harmful ways. He's able to really access these dark corners of our psyches. At the end of the day, we're all just trying to tell a human story.

BEEF is so dark, but it's also so funny. One scene that made me laugh was the one when you and Ali Wong are arguing, and you say, “This is a celebration of chairs!”

That line wasn't even in the original script. The scene was going great—but there was just an extra punch-up that may have been necessary. So at one point, we do a take and I look over at Sonny. He's just pondering to himself, then he sticks his head out and delivers that line. He says to try it. So the next take, we tried it and everyone's dying. I messed up the first initial take because I was cracking up so hard after... We were doing a chemistry read initially for that scene, and there was just this immediate understanding and trust between Ali and I to keep pushing. By the time I walked out of that room, I was doing breathing exercises in my car from the high I was on. I knew how fun this scene was going to be and how exciting of a dance partner I was going to have in Ali.

In BEEF, you get a lot of moments where strangers share their truest feelings to each other. The scene with George and Danny—when they start becoming bros, and Danny has that very emotional reaction to George's art. What was that scene like to play?