Showrunner Lee Sung Jin is Back with More ‘Beef’

Since the arrival of Beef in 2023, showrunner and creator Lee Sung Jin has been hailed as “the preeminent social satirist” working in television.

The Emmy-winning writer/director joins us around the anthology’s return (3:10) to discuss the source material behind this latest season (4:30), the rise of scammers (12:00), and the distinctions between Korean and American elites (18:00). Then, we move through Lee’s nomadic childhood (28:45), his years as an NBC page (38:28), and a decade of working inside writers’ rooms for shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley (43:45).

On the back-half, he speaks candidly about his battles with depression (53:00), the PowerPoint that lead to Beef landing at Netflix (1:01:00), the pains of perfectionism (1:03:30), what the next generation of writers can do to break into television (1:07:30), the day director Bong Joon Ho visited his set (1:22:20), and why Lee feels he’s just getting started (1:24:38).

Clips from Beef courtesy of Netflix. Subscribe to our new YouTube channel.

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