Lee Sung Jin on the breakthrough that led him to ‘BEEF’

**Tonya Mosley** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley, and my guest today is creator, writer, and director, Lee Sung Jin. The second season of his Netflix series, Beef, just earned 16 Emmy nominations, including nominations for writing, directing, and executive producing. Lee says he writes what he knows, and what he keeps returning to are the pressures people carey but rarely talk about, money, class, and the anger we sometimes swallow to get through the day.
The idea for season two began when Lee was walking through his neighborhood and heard a couple arguing with each other inside of their home. Later when he told the story, his younger friends were horrified. Did you call 911? They asked. Friends his own age had almost the opposite reaction. They shrugged. Lee couldn't stop thinking about that split, what it revealed about what different generations expect from relationships, and what happens when the private lives of one generation collide with the values of another. That became the new season of Beef. Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan play a married couple whose ugliest private fight is secretly recorded by two young employees, Ashley and Austin, played by Kaylee Spaney and Charles Melton. The next morning, Austin comes over and offers Mulligan's character a safe place if she needs it. She tells him that he's misunderstood the situation.
How old are you?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:33)
Um, and how long have you and... What's her name?

**Lee Sung Jin** (1:38)
Ashley.

**Tonya Mosley** (1:39)
Ashley.

**Lee Sung Jin** (1:39)
How long have you and Ashley been going out?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:44)
Year and a half.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:46)
Wow.

**David Bianculli** (1:47)
So early.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:49)
Well, you've got a good fight coming.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:51)
And when it does come, you two are going to be stronger for it. If I may say this, man, I don't think that's how relationships work.

**David Bianculli** (2:00)
All right.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:02)
All I'll say is that all the couples I know that last, they've really had at it, you know. It's actually the ones that don't where someone's usually hiding something. I mean, not to say that that's your situation with, um... Ashley. Ashley. But the bad does have to come out somewhere.
Do you understand?

**Tonya Mosley** (2:29)
The first season of Beef, starring Allie Wong and Steven Yeun, also grew out of a moment Lee couldn't let go of. A road rage encounter that ended with him following another driver for nearly half an hour.
That season won eight Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series. Before creating Beef, Lee spent years writing for comedies, including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley. Lee Sung Jin, welcome to Fresh Air, and congratulations.

**Lee Sung Jin** (2:59)
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

**Tonya Mosley** (3:00)
And I'm just so curious, what was it about your friend's reaction to those people fighting in your neighborhood that really sparked this for you?

**Lee Sung Jin** (3:07)
Well, you know, to be honest, the actual neighbors are older. They're probably boomers, I think. I don't know their exact age, but when I was talking to friends and writers, it was interesting that the 40-some-year-olds were all defending the boomers.

**Tonya Mosley** (3:28)
Yeah.

**Lee Sung Jin** (3:29)
And I was trying to examine why that is, and I'm like, oh no, it's because we're old now.

**Tonya Mosley** (3:34)
We know what it's like to be in a relationship.

**Lee Sung Jin** (3:37)
Yeah. And I thought that, oh wow, like elder millennials haven't really, hadn't really seen characters wrestle with the fact that, oh, we're starting to feel and do things that the previous generation did for the first time.
And as someone who's 44, that felt very potent and relevant. And so yeah, it just kind of sparked something in me.

**Tonya Mosley** (4:04)
I also wondered, is there something very specific about midlife at this time period, for millennials in particular? Because in this series, Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, they play Josh and Lindsay, and they're a married couple who Josh actually works for this really swanky country club. And then the two younger people, they also work there.
Josh has a little bit more power because he's a manager, but all of them kind of don't have power. But they begin throughout the course of the series to battle against each other instead of the folks who are the ones with the money and power, who are part of the country club, you know?

**Lee Sung Jin** (4:46)
Exactly.

**Tonya Mosley** (4:47)
Yeah, it's just interesting.

**Lee Sung Jin** (4:48)
That was very much intended. I had the privilege of getting to use the country club for a month because I was house-sitting for one of my best friends who, we've been friends since our mid-20s, we're broke and poor together, temped in random places in LA, and he recently came into a lot of money in tech over the last few years. So he became a member of Montecito Country Club. I was house-sitting for him for a month, and he allowed me to use his membership while I was there.