Lee Sung Jin On Depression, The Beauty of Anger, & The Spirituality Of Netflix’s ‘Beef’

**Lee Sung Jin** (0:00)
Letting go is actually the thing.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
Yeah.

**Lee Sung Jin** (0:03)
But we keep forgetting. Lee Sung Jin. Lee Sung Jin, the creator of the hit Netflix show Beef.

**Rich Roll** (0:10)
He has other television products in development with A24, FX and Lionsgate. You've expanded your aperture and you're tackling much deeper existential questions about what it is to be human.

**Lee Sung Jin** (0:20)
Danny says in season one, rock bottom can be your trampoline, which was just ripped from the headlines of my life. And I just started re-examining everything, like just intentionality, like what's my intention as a friend, as a son, as a writer.
I'm actually sort of glad everything happened the way it did because what a privilege it is to get to take pain and then make art out of it.

**Rich Roll** (0:49)
What would the 12-year-old version of you think if he knew that one day he was going to be writing X-Men and getting Emmy nominations? It's not as if from day one, you were thinking you were going to be a writer and a filmmaker.

**Lee Sung Jin** (1:05)
No.

**Rich Roll** (1:06)
This is not really the trajectory.

**Lee Sung Jin** (1:08)
It certainly was not. When I was 12, I was just studying for the PSATs. I was playing violin hours and hours every day. That's why my neck leans this way. I constantly have to correct it that way. Yeah, I had no idea that this was in store.
I do feel very, very blessed. What stays the same though is like, at 12, I was also thinking very similar existential questions, and those questions are still here, haven't really been answered.
And so, it's like, yes, like I don't think 12-year-old me would expect the hamster wheel that I'm on to look the way it does. But then I think 12-year-old me would be like, oh, you're still, someone will have the answers, huh?

**Rich Roll** (2:02)
What do your folks think about what you're doing?

**Lee Sung Jin** (2:06)
They're very, very proud now. I think in the beginning, they're very confused. When I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in an economics degree, I was supposed to be an investment banker, and I just said, sorry, I'm moving to New York with no plan. And they were rightfully concerned. And I was a mess in my 20s. I was just like a tumbleweed just being blown around. And back then, there was a lot of concern and worry.
Now, so, so proud.
But still, my parents, my dad watched season two and texted me, hey, good job, but that final scene was too long. He should have. He's giving you notes. It was like, this shot should have been this much shorter, and then you should have cut to this and then this, and then it would have been great. Now he's an editor. Yeah. And I was like, well, the dad, dad, it's like, the show's on the platform. It's aired, so I can't like remove it and apply those changes. But, you know, so they're still my parents, but they are extremely, extremely proud, yeah.

**Rich Roll** (3:13)
True or false, your dad designed the first supercomputer?

**Lee Sung Jin** (3:17)
For Samsung, yes.

**Rich Roll** (3:18)
For Samsung.

**Lee Sung Jin** (3:19)
Yeah, he was a professor for most of, I know, our lives. And there was a brief period where we moved back to Korea from my elementary school because he had gotten a job at Samsung, and he was tasked with designing the first supercomputer.
And he gave up that job to move us all back to United States because of how bad the public school system was back then, where they had to reform the school system so the teachers would beat you every single day. Like, like actual beat. Like, there was one teacher who made you do pushups, and while you're doing pushups, would punch you in the face. And you would stay after hours and hold a chair above your head. And if your elbows went down, they'd come with a metal ruler and just slap your wrist really hard. You have to straighten out. So that was every single day from third, fourth, fifth grade. And I was coming home with like bruises and just, and so my parents decided to, that this Samsung path wasn't worth it, and they would move us back to the United States, which I'm very, very thankful for. Obviously, Korea has since greatly reformed their education system to the other extreme, where teachers are committing suicide now because the students bullied them so hard.
So overcorrected there. But my dad likes to lament that all the heads of Samsung were people that were under him when he was there. And what could have been?