Nothing else on TV tells stories across tones, genres, themes, and continents quite like Beef. And that’s largely because there is no other show on TV created by Lee Sung Jin.
The Netflix anthology series, now two seasons in, is an amalgamation of Lee’s interests, obsessions, and concerns, brought to life by a team of diverse creatives all working toward capturing something true and — hopefully — entertaining.
In the final installment of Beef‘s Creator Diaries, Lee explains why the show is what it is: among other things, a wild examination of class, rage, and connection seen largely through a Korean-American lens.
And below, Lee spoke with Gold Derby about finding his voice as a young writer and how a project like Beef could be so personal.
Gold Derby: When you were first starting out a TV writer, what kind of material were you drawn to creating?
Lee Sung Jin: What I loved to consume was more dramatic — very cinephile bro. I watched Oldboy for the first time in 2004, and my brain was broken from it. I didn’t know movies could be like this. And not realizing that that space was something that I could do, I defaulted to what was popular at the time, which was comedy. Everyone else I knew that was also trying screenwriting were taking TV classes and writing their How I Met Your Mother specs. I think the first thing I ever wrote with my then-writing partner was a Scrubs spec. I had so much fun doing it, but I think when you’re starting out, you’re so insecure. At least, I was. The default is to copy and mimic and just try to look around for external answers, and I did that for a very long time. I was trying assimilate into the industry in the same way I had been assimilating culturally my entire life, and I had success doing it.
When did that change?
I had burnout and a sort of mental health breakdown around 2013 and started therapy. I really used that as an opportunity to re-evaluate everything in my life. If I was going to participate in this existence, I asked “Why am I on this planet? What is the purpose of writing?” And that’s when I started to shift and try to just be more myself as I write — and also be more myself in my day to day. From 2013 to 2023, when Beef Season 1 came out, that was a decade-long journey of trying to shed all the masks and just be comfortable in my own skin as a person, so that that could be reflected in my writing.
So when Beef came around for you, did it feel like a major shift in the way you were writing?
Oh, yeah. In a major way. I think from minute one, I could tell there was something special about Beef. It’s also largely thanks to the collaborators on this project, from the first person I told my initial road rage story to — Ravi Nandan, the head of A24 Television. He didn’t blink an eye. He’s like, “That’s a great show. Let’s do it together.” Bela Bajaria and Jinny Howe at Netflix, when I was pitching them the show over Zoom, they bought it in the room, not even at the end of the pitch. They stopped me, and they’re like, “We want to do this.” I think it’s partly fate or luck, but there’s been collaborators that just fully believed in me and the show. There’s a narrative that normally you’re always pushing against the grain on something or fighting for more specificity. Everybody on this one actually had been pushing me to get more specific, to challenge myself to between Season 1 and Season 2, to not just copy and paste a formula and constantly wanting to raise the bar and take big swings. That’s an environment that I just never had before. And so I think that’s why I’ve been able to write something so personal in both seasons. I have fearless collaborators who wouldn’t want any other way.
This article and video were presented by Netflix.
The interview was edited for clarity and length.
