Xuenou > Celebrity > I Absolutely Need To Go Rewatch Netflix’s “Beef” After Reading These 46 Behind-The-Scenes Facts And Details
I Absolutely Need To Go Rewatch Netflix’s “Beef” After Reading These 46 Behind-The-Scenes Facts And Details
I Absolutely Need To Go Rewatch Netflix's "Beef" After Reading These 46 Behind-The-Scenes Facts And Details,One of Amy's revenge methods against Danny was cut — but it would have been so hilariously dark to watch.

I Absolutely Need To Go Rewatch Netflix’s “Beef” After Reading These 46 Behind-The-Scenes Facts And Details

There are spoilers ahead for all 10 episodes of Beef! ?

Last week, Netflix released A24’s 10-episode series Beef, starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, and fans and critics alike are calling it one of the best shows of the year. From discussing the nuances of the Asian American experience to thirsting over breakout star Young Mazino to demanding a second season, the internet just can’t get enough of the thrilling dramedy.

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2. However, this is the first time Ali and Steven acted together on screen, though they’ve been friends since long before Beef. “I really didn’t know what it was going to be like, because we had never been on camera together,” Ali told BuzzFeed. “We had already signed on to do this project together and developed it, so it was kind of a risk because we didn’t know if we would have chemistry.”

Charley Gallay / Getty Images for Netflix

(Read BuzzFeed’s full Beef interview with Ali Wong here.)

3. The idea for Beef was sparked by Sonny’s own road rage experience in Los Angeles, when someone in a white SUV pulled up next to him at a traffic light and began honking and screaming at him because the light had turned green.

Kayla Oaddams / WireImage

“I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood that day, but I sort of was like, ‘You know what? That’s not okay to do, and I’m going to follow you home,'” Sonny told Vanity Fair. While nothing happened after he tailed the car across town, it did inspire him to create Beef

“There was just a lot that happened there that made me kind of pause and go, ‘Oh, I’m so focused on my reality and my blinders and my subjective view of this incident.’ I’m sure from his point of view, here I am in a very low BMW, and we’re probably reflecting the same sort of projections onto one another.”

4. When Sonny told Steven about his idea for Beef, Steven was immediately interested. However, before Ali joined the project, Sonny envisioned the other driver as a “Stanley Tucci–type character.”

Charles Eshelman / FilmMagic

Could you imagine it?

5. Beef marks Ali’s first dramatic lead role. While she was intimidated to co-lead with Steven — who became the first Asian American actor nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2020 for Minari — he reassured her before filming. “Before filming, he looked me in the eye and said, ‘I don’t know anything you don’t know,'” Ali told the Hollywood Reporter. “And either he’s a really good actor or he meant it, because it really leveled the playing field. If he hadn’t said that to me, I don’t know if I would have been able to perform the way I did.”

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6. She also noted that she found her role in Beef to be “a way to say what [she’s] been wanting to say about relationships and being a working mom that [she hasn’t] found a way to talk about onstage” while doing stand-up. “I’ll leave it up for interpretation what this means,” she added.

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7. In the opening scene, Ali’s white SUV represents a white whale for Danny. If you’ve read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, you might recognize the literary symbol of the white whale: a consuming obsession one pursues with little chance of success.

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8. After filming concluded, both Ali and Steven broke out into hives. “Mine was on my face. His was all over his body because he’s weak like that,” Ali joked during a Q&A at South by Southwest. “It definitely took a toll on us, but we didn’t even realize until after the show ended. I mean, I won’t even talk about what happened to your elbow.”

Roger Kisby / Getty Images for Netflix

9. Sonny shared that while everyone cried when they wrapped filming, Ali cried for a long time. “I think she was holding a lot of the pain of that character in, and it all came pouring out,” he said.

Jc Olivera / Getty Images

10. Ali also revealed that she went to Joshua Tree soon after filming Beef and did mushrooms. “Oh, my God, this is so corny, but at one point, I was sobbing and I was calling out Steven’s character’s name between sobs. I think it was part of letting it all go,” she told Rolling Stone.

Paula Lobo / ABC via Getty Images

11. The titles of each of the 10 episodes are quotes that reference the episode’s theme. However, Sonny revealed there was one quote that really guided the overall series: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,” by Carl Jung.

Roger Kisby / Getty Images for Netflix

“In my own life, I find that I’ve only grown when I really look at the darkness in me,” Sonny said.

12. Subsequently, the quotes used in the episode titles are taken from famous works or passages. For instance, the title of Episode 1, “The Birds Don’t Sing, They Screech in Pain,” is taken from German film director Werner Herzog’s documentary Burden of Dreams. Here are the next nine episode titles:

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Episode 2: “The Rapture of Being Alive” by American writer Joseph Campbell from his 1988 televised interview with Bill Moyers 

Episode 3: “I Am Inhabited by a Cry” by American poet Sylvia Plath from her poem Elm

Episode 4: “Just Not All at the Same Time” by American feminist writer Betty Friedan from her answer when asked during a conference if women can have it all

Episode 5: “Such Inward Secret Creatures” by Irish and British novelist Iris Murdoch from her novel The Sea, the Sea

Episode 6: “We Draw a Magic Circle” by Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman from his film Through a Glass Darkly

Episode 7: “I Am a Cage” by German writer Franz Kafka from his collection of aphorisms The Zürau Aphorisms

Episode 8: “The Drama of Original Choice” by French philosopher and feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir from her book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Episode 9: “The Great Fabricator” by French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil from her book Gravity and Grace

Episode 10: “Figures of Light” by Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung from his book Alchemical Studies, Volume 13

For the full quotes and how they relate to each episode, check out this explainer article from Netflix’s Tudum.

13. Sonny also took inspiration from The Sopranos characters to make Amy and Danny both deplorable and redeemable. “I think David [Chase] and those writers do such an incredible job with Tony and all the characters on the show, where every time they do something horrible, you just have to have some sort of glimpse of humanity for the audience to then forget,” Sonny said.

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“I tried to make sure that we always kept that balance for everything that you would cringe at, that you see something of redemptive quality in them or a vulnerability or something that makes you kind of empathize,” he continued.

14. In particular, a Sopranos episode in which Richie Aprile points a gun at Janice’s head while having sex inspired the scene in which Amy masturbates with a gun.

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15. Ali found the gun masturbation scene to be fun and easy. “That one felt very honest. We had been struggling to come up with what Amy could do that was something that was naughty and private for herself. And as soon as Sonny pitched that, I was like, ‘Yes! That’s it,'” she told Complex.

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16. When Amy and George argue at the gallery after she admits to using the gun to masturbate because she feels George is too vanilla, George’s original line was, “Well, vanilla’s the most universally beloved flavor of all time.” While Sonny acknowledged the line was funny on paper, it felt too long and written. The last line they tried ended up being the perfect one: “I don’t fuck guns.”

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17. On the other hand, Ali found the therapy scene — in which Amy reflects on her crumbling marriage, insecurities around motherhood, and the feasibility of unconditional love — to be the most daunting to shoot. “It was a long speech I gave that [Sonny] wrote. He didn’t say, ‘You have to cry.’ I just ended up crying. Now when I watch it, I can’t believe that happened. Like, who is that person? I really don’t recognize that person,” Ali said.

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Sonny recalled that Ali was able to nail the scene, which included an extreme close-up, in the second take. “You could see the emotion bubbling up in her eyes and the tears forming,” he said, adding that there was no separation between Ali and Amy while Ali was in character.

18. The finale was Ali’s favorite episode to film. “It’s just me and Steven the whole time,” she told BuzzFeed.

Netflix / Via youtube.com

19. They filmed the finale in three different ways to achieve the voiceover effect with Steven and Ali.

Netflix / Via youtube.com

20. It was actually Ali’s idea for Amy to crawl into Danny’s hospital bed in the end. She suggested it while on a Zoom call discussing an ending for the series with Steven, Sonny, Ravi [Nandan], and Alli Reich at A24.

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21. The final scene was also the first television scene Sonny ever directed “in his life,” according to [series executive producer Jake Schreier], and he did it over Zoom while having COVID. “My assistant was walking around with my face on an iPad and I was just like, ‘Yeah, that looks good,'” Sonny said.

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22. Sonny originally had a different song in mind for the cold open of Episode 7, but after Steven sent him a voice note singing “Amazing Grace,” they arranged it to be a “more tongue-in-cheek, very Korean church happy rendition” and used that instead.

Netflix / Via youtube.com

“I got a text message, a voice note from Steven one day. I press play, and it’s just a capella pitch perfect, him singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ the Chris Tomlin version, from start to finish. And it was beautiful. I was like, yep, that’s it.” Sonny said.

23. Writer and co-executive producer Ali Ju originally pitched the idea of Amy learning about Zersetzung, a psychological warfare technique, from Jordan, and then “subtly messing with Danny’s life” by moving things in his apartment and using his toiletries to make him feel like he was losing it, but they ultimately cut it.

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24. There wasn’t much improvisation in Beef because it was filmed on a tight schedule.

25. During development, Ali spoke with Sonny any time she felt a certain scene, line of dialogue, or choice of Amy’s didn’t feel honest or real, and they’d talk through and revise it accordingly.

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26. While Ali felt like she understood Amy from the beginning, she was surprised to have really connected with Steven’s character Danny by the end of the series. “I think that’s probably really what surprised me, how much I came to really love Danny,” she said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the unique bond I have with Steven on and off screen, and also in Sonny’s writing of Danny and how beautifully complicated, conflicted, interesting, and funny he is.”

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27. Ali found herself laughing so much when watching the series and seeing Steven’s performance. In particular, she found the scene when Danny’s struggling to eat Burger King and crying in the church to be the funniest.

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“Oh my gosh, when he’s in the pilot, eating all those Burger King sandwiches and then almost throws up but swallows and just keeps eating fries — so funny. I laughed so hard,” she said.

“And then, in the church, when he starts to cry — that’s a little bit sensitive. I pointed out to him that I laughed at that, and he was, at first, really taken aback and, I think, maybe a touch offended because, to him, it was so real and so serious. But that’s what made it so funny, you know?”

28. On that note, Ali had never eaten a chicken sandwich from Burger King until filming Beef.

29. Centered on Asian American characters, Beef contains references to the cast’s own cultures and experiences. Like Ali, Amy has Chinese and Vietnamese parents.

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30. Similarly, Danny’s ties to a Korean church come from Steven’s own experience with a Korean church, something Steven and Sonny — who have been friends for years — have talked about before. “We’ve talked about the Korean church for a while,” Sonny told Entertainment Weekly. “We never could quite find the right thing to focus on that. And once you start thinking about Danny, it just makes sense that he grew up in the church.”

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31. Helen Huang, the head of Beef‘s costume department, told Ali, “I think it is so interesting if Amy wears these clothes that are seemingly zen and neutral, but then she has these insane thoughts.” As a result, Amy wore very neutral tones and shapeless outfits.

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32. Because of that, Ali described Amy’s clothes as feeling like a sort of cage. “It wasn’t supposed to feel like that,” Ali said. “Amy chose those clothes, but it’s the person she wants to be and someone who she is not.”

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“They’re also these clothes that are not ostentatious because they don’t have a big designer label on them — but they are,” Ali continued. “Because an exclusive group of people who know what’s up can tell from the placement of a button or the cut that that shirt is a $500 shirt that looks, to anyone else, like a burlap shirt. So, yeah, all those messages of the kind of class Amy wants to be associated with are weaved in there, and that was all really helpful.”

33. Helen also told BuzzFeed that a lot of Danny’s clothes came from Goodwill because Danny is the type of person who would only buy new clothes to directly replace an article of clothing. “He’s one of those men that stopped dressing himself when he was 24 or 25, and sort of continues wearing his clothes over and over again from that period,” she said.

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34. She added that she intentionally had Danny wear slides around his home as a reference to Asian culture. “I literally imagine he got them at the supermarket. You know, they’re knockoff knockoffs and really, really old,” Helen said. “That was one of the things I really liked — to show what Asian men wear in private at home. In a way, a lot of Asians don’t spend a lot of money on clothes that they wear at home.”

She mentioned that Danny wears a Nautica jacket and Paul wears a Champion sweatshirt.

35. Young Mazino — who plays Danny’s younger brother, Paul — went to a Korean nightclub in Los Angeles to observe how guys there would dress and behave to better play Paul. “Paul would want to try to emulate this kind of streetwear, hypebeast kind of stuff, but he’s not quite getting to that point. He’s maybe 30% of the way. Because he grew up in the [Korean] church, he’s a little awkward,” he told Vanity Fair.

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36. Ali’s real house inspired the set design for Amy’s house, but certain features were modified to feel more confining. “There are these wooden slats in Amy’s house right by the staircase, and I have wooden slats in my house, as well,” she said. “When I got to set, I was like, ‘Hm, why do these wooden slats feel so different?’ And [production designer Grace Yun] said, ‘Well, I spaced them out a little more so that while they are seemingly very zen, they also make your house feel like a cage.'”

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37. Grace also revealed that George’s sculptures were created by the series’ art department, and their “amorphous blob shapes” represent how George floats through life without self-imposed restrictions. “It’s a very playful take of ‘What would George do if he had Play-Doh in his hands?’ His art comes from that childlike space, too,” she said.

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“I happened upon a chart of abstract yoga poses to base the sculptures off of, and we started nicknaming them things like ‘The Dinosaur’ or ‘The Dog,'” Grace said. 

38. Joseph Lee, who plays George, is also an artist himself.

Michael Buckner / Variety via Getty Images

39. There were originally 100 chairs at the art show exhibiting the Tamago chair (created by George’s father), but they cut it down to 65 chairs to ensure there was enough room around each one.

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40. Speaking of George’s sculptures, Ali actually took one of George’s vases and Amy’s glasses from the set after filming.

41. However, she doesn’t think she’d ever wear Amy’s glasses. “They’re so different from the glasses that I choose to wear. They’re so architectural and thin and tasteful and almost invisible and neutral. The glasses I wear are generally very oversized and a little more editorial,” Ali said.

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42. Jordan treats her house as a private exhibition space for herself. “The set decorator and I thought it would be funny if we could have furniture pieces that wouldn’t be inviting but would be exclusive enough for Jordan to be interested in,” Grace said. “Sonny and I really leaned into the theme of private curation and cultural appropriation with the crown room.”

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43. On top of thinking they’re the perfect Instagram couple, Ali thinks George and Amy could work out in the end. “I do think that if George were to come to her after seeing everything that she’s done and have more empathy for her, and understand that some of the uglier parts of Amy are never going to go away, and if he authentically does love the whole person that she is and can feel it, then yeah, I think they have a chance,” she said.

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44. Meanwhile, Young Mazino thinks Paul would never forgive Danny after finding out Danny threw away his college applications. “But I think that he could still love his brother and be there for him — if he really needed him,” he told Vulture. “Family, particularly in Korean and Korean American culture, is so important. He’ll never forget, he’ll never get over this. But I think that there’s still love, and love is irrational.”

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45. Sonny originally planned for way more characters to die when he wrote the outline for Beef. “Everyone was like, ‘Sonny, you okay?’ Even Jake called me. Jake was like, ‘Hey, buddy…’ And the studio and network, they rightfully were like, ‘We love it, but maybe not everyone dies,'” Sonny said.

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When asked which characters were originally killed off, Sonny kept mum but added, “Just think of a name and they’re probably dead.”

46. Lastly, when asked if viewers will see more of Danny and Amy in the future, Sonny revealed the series was initially pitched as a limited anthology. So while he’s content to end the story as is, he’s open to continuing Beef (and has lots of ideas) if viewers do demand more from Netflix.

Jc Olivera / Getty Images

What do you think of these facts? Do they add anything to your understanding of Beef? Or are there any facts you know that didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comment below!