‘Beef’ Creator Gives Season 2 Update & Reveals Dramatically Different Original Plans for Show
Beef was a certified hit when it landed on Netflix earlier this year, and now the show’s creator, Lee Sung Jin, is opening up about alternate endings and the potential for a second season.
The black comedy-drama starred Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as Amy Lau and Danny Cho, two strangers who become embroiled in a dangerous and violent feud following a road rage incident. It co-starred Joseph Lee as Amy’s stay-at-home-husband George Nakai and Young Mazino as Danny’s unmotivated younger brother Paul Cho.
“I’d love to make more,” Sung Jin told The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview, adding that the shoe was “initially pitched as an anthology series where every season is a new beef with new characters.”
However, the director stated how much he loves the Season 1 characters and is open to doing more within that world. But things are at a standstill right now due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strikes against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
“At the same time, I really love Danny and Amy and George and Paul and the world we created. So, I’m really open to it all,” he shared. “Most importantly, I really want to keep working with this crew that I’ve really fallen in love with. But it’s hard for me to say which direction we’ll go without a writers room and any sort of momentum, so I’m really hoping the AMPTP comes to its senses.”
A potential option for Season 2 includes Stanley Tucci, the actor Sung Jin originally had in mind for Wong’s role. While Sung Jin spoke highly of Tucci, he said they changed direction because he didn’t want the show to “become about race and the white patriarchy versus marginalized communities.”
“I really wanted to remove that Asians versus white people lens – other writers do that very well, but, at least for Beef, I wanted to let the audience be okay not thinking about that for this story,” he explained. “And then it was just coincidental timing that Ali Wong called. I’d worked with her on Tuca & Bertie, and it very quickly became clear that having Ali opposite Steven would make the character so much more layered and so much more interesting.”
That said, Sung Jin said he “would love to work with [Tucci] someday,” so perhaps the Golden Globe winner will one day enter the world of Beef.
Sung Jin also discussed the end of Season 1, which saw Amy crawl into Danny’s hospital bed. He admitted that was Wong’s idea and that his original plan for both the penultimate episode and the finale was “much more bleak.”
“Yeah, in the penultimate, there were so many more deaths! And then the ending was much more bleak, and part of the reason is because so much of the stuff I’d consumed growing up that I love is so bleak,” he stated.
“It was Steven and Ali who pushed me to come up with something a little more hopeful because so much of our narratives that we’ve consumed act as a mirror and solely that,” he added. “So you’re like, ‘Oh, we suck and life sucks and there’s no real solutions.’ Whereas if you can give a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, then maybe that offers us some hope to change.”
Beef, Season 1, Streaming, Netflix
