Ali Wong and Steven Yeun co-star in “Beef,” Netflix’s wild and wooly road rage series. Surprisingly both Wong and the show’s creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin have experienced the phenomenon themselves.
“When I was 16 years old,” Wong, 40, recalled during a virtual discussion, “this guy was drunk and I don’t know why he was angry at me all of a sudden. But he was so angry he did pull up on the driver’s side, in the lane that was going the opposite side of traffic, and looked me in the eye in his truck and then he was screaming at me. He threw all sorts of expletives at me. All I could focus on was losing him.
“But,” she concluded with a laugh, “I don’t think that influenced my performance.”
“Mine was a typical road rage thing,” Lee, 38, said, “where the light turned green and I didn’t go fast enough and he honked at me, said a bunch of things, and raced off.
“For some reason that day I was ‘I’ll follow you!’ I didn’t really have a plan. In my mind I was justifying it, like I’m on my way and I just happen to be behind you.
“I’m sure for that person it felt like I was tracking him the whole time on the 10 Highway. I thought there was something there– about people who are very stuck in their subjective views of reality and projecting assumptions onto the other person.
“That was the kernel of the idea so I’m very thankful for that incident.”
“Beef” finds Wong’s Amy enraging Yeun’s Danny during an escalating road rage incident. That keeps escalating. Amy is a well-known social media guru with impeccable taste and a taste for luxury including the Mercedes-Benz she drives. She’s also a bundle of internal anxieties and fear. Dan, in a red pickup, is economically challenged, struggling with his own anxieties.
Yeun, 39 and known for “The Walking Dead” and his Best Actor Oscar-nominated work in “Minari,” didn’t see “Beef” ’s comedic riffs as different from the serious work he’s done.
“It was weird because it didn’t feel like a switch to play comedy because what Danny feels is the sadness of his life,” he said.
One reality to emerge from making “Beef”: A mighty friendship, for these parents, each with two kids.
“We didn’t know each other that well. Now we talk all the time,” Wong revealed. “The best thing I’ve gotten out of the show is my friendship with Steven.”
“The friendship,” Yeun added, “is the exciting thing in the deepest, kindest, most honest way.”
Netflix streams all 8 episodes of “Beef” April 6