LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Road age has never been quite so fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORN HONKING)
FADEL: Three years ago, the Netflix series "Beef" gave us two characters whose traffic altercation spiraled into one revenge plot after another.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
FADEL: Now "Beef" is back for Season 2. But this time, it's all new characters and all new beef.
LEE SUNG JIN: This season is a more passive-aggressive beef.
FADEL: That's Lee Sung Jin. He created the series. And he got the idea for Season 2 from real life.
LEE: I overheard a heated debate coming from a couple's home. You know, it was actually when I was retelling that story to friends that inspiration struck because, you know, my Gen Z peers were very aghast and asking, oh, did I call 911? Are you going to follow up? And, you know, very, very concerned. Whereas my millennial and Gen X peers sort of just shrugged and was like, I mean, come on.
FADEL: Mind your business.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE: Who amongst us hasn't screamed at the top of our lungs?
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OSCAR ISAAC: (As Joshua Martin, shouting)
FADEL: This season is about two couples. Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan play the older couple. They're at home, engaged in a bitter fight.
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ISAAC: (As Joshua Martin) Thank God we didn't have kids.
CAREY MULLIGAN: (As Lindsay Crane-Martin) Oh, [expletive] you.
FADEL: When they're overheard by a younger couple, played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny, she whips out her phone...
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CAILEE SPAENY: (As Ashley Miller) I'm going to record it.
FADEL: ...And films the event. Then they use that video to either blackmail the older, wealthier couple or extract a little cosmic justice from them, depending on your perspective. Both couples work at an exclusive country club on the California coast based on a real place Lee Sung Jin visited.
LEE: A lot of the members of the club were, you know, Silent Gen and boomer. And a lot of the employees are Gen Z and millennial. And in my mind, no matter how hard those employees work, they're never going to get to be members. There's so many people in the younger generation who feel that everyone, you know, quote, "grabbed the bag" before they could. And no matter how hard you work, you're never going to get to be, you know, members of the country club that is upper-class life. So we thought that metaphor was very appropriate.
FADEL: Your last season was very much the Korean American experience, and most of the cast was Asian American. This time, you have a real mix - white, Korean, half-Korean is one of the main characters. And I just wonder about those decisions.
LEE: You know, I think what happens sometimes with creatives who are people of color, oftentimes, our first efforts are about our own personal experience growing up. But once you do that and you find success in that, both audiences and, you know, studios and networks try to pigeonhole you to be just that. And while that is one facet of my existence, it is not all the facets. And so that's why this season, I wanted to try new angles, new textures. Charles Melton was the first piece, though, that came on board because I knew the half-Korean arc was the most important to me.
FADEL: Charles Melton, the actor, is himself half-Korean. And in one very funny scene, his character comes face to face with just how little he understands.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking Korean).
FADEL: The story eventually takes us from the super-rich of California to the super-rich of Seoul. There, Melton's character nods knowingly as he offers to translate a language he clearly doesn't fully understand.
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CHARLES MELTON: (As Austin Davis) OK, for sure. He said cold, and I know he said wife. And I think I heard soup.
FADEL: I'm half-Lebanese and I'm half-white. And (laughter) I remember the first time anybody noticed me in a newsroom was 9/11 had happened. I was in college, answering phones at The Boston Globe. And somebody was like, anybody speak Arabic? And I was like, yeah.
LEE: (Laughter).
FADEL: Now I speak much better.
LEE: Yeah.
FADEL: But at the time, I was like - I didn't know what I was doing. And they'd be like, can you translate this? I'd call my dad. I'd call my brother.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: And it was so resonant for that experience of being American but of this place. And it was so interesting.
LEE: You know, in terms of the identity struggle, a lot of the writers on staff are either half-Korean or half-Asian. There's one in particular, Alex Russell. He's half-Korean. And he said something really, really early on in the room that I found fascinating. He was talking about himself. And he said, if he marries a full Korean and they had a baby, and that baby married another full Korean and had a baby, and that happened for all of eternity, he would never get back to 100.
FADEL: Oh, wow.
LEE: (Laughter) Which is just, like, such an insane inside thought to say out loud.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE: And I'm like, well, that concept, that spirit needs to be in the show because those are inside thoughts that probably so many not only half-Koreans, but anyone from half an ethnicity is thinking about. That felt like "Beef."
FADEL: You know, you used to go, I think, by Sonny Lee, right?
LEE: Yes.
FADEL: And now you've gone back to Lee Sung Jin. Why did you do that?
LEE: I moved around a lot. I went to elementary school in Korea. I moved to Minnesota when I was in sixth grade. That year was really pretty tough because I had, you know, a thick accent. And every day when my teacher would call attendance, she would find new consonants to put in my name, which was, like, so annoying.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE: And so people would laugh. And I just got fed up. And I remember staring at a piece of homework...
FADEL: Yeah.
LEE: ...And looking at the name section. And I just randomly came up with the name Sonny. And I was like, this is what I go by. Everyone needs to call me this. And it was a way to assimilate. Decades later, I was living in Santa Monica, and I went to this coffee place. And they call your order by the name on your credit card, which is my legal name. And they butchered it. And I was standing next to two 30-something-year-old women, and they started laughing. And I found myself reverting back to my sixth grade self. And at the time, I think "Parasite" had just come out.
FADEL: Yeah.
LEE: And a friend of mine, we're talking and we're like, how come, like, director Bong and director Park's names sound so cool? Like, Bong Joon Ho, Park Chan-wook - like, when you hear those names, you're just like...
FADEL: Yeah.
LEE: ...Those are the coolest names on Earth.
FADEL: Yeah.
LEE: And it's because they make the best stuff ever. And so I thought, well, maybe if I try to make stuff that's good and I go by my Korean name, it'll help, like, destigmatize...
FADEL: Right.
LEE: ...Hearing these three syllables.
FADEL: I bet everybody says it right now.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE: Oh, thank you.
FADEL: Lee Sung Jin is the creator of the series "Beef." The second season is out now on Netflix. Thank you so much for that conversation.
LEE: Oh, thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISCLOSURE AND ELIZA DOOLITTLE SONG, "YOU AND ME (FLUME REMIX)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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