Lee Sung Jin arrived in Hollywood the way his characters arrive at crisis: gradually, then all at once. The Korean-American writer spent years in the writers’ rooms of shows like Silicon Valley and Dave before Beef made him one of TV’s standout showrunners. The series, which cleaned up at the Emmys two years ago, debuted its second season on Netflix last week with a new cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny, as a group of country club employees and their bosses whose passive-aggressive war of favors, coercion, and mutual destruction spirals far beyond the argument that started it all. Towards the end of his press tour, the 44-year-old—whose next job is writing the X-Men movie for Marvel—connected with his friend Ayo Edebiri, masks on and conspiracy theories at the ready.
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LEE SUNG JIN: Hello.
AYO EDEBIRI: Gorgeous.
LEE: How are you?
EDEBIRI: I’m so hungover. [Laughs]
LEE: How was last night?
EDEBIRI: Brother, it was fun, but I’m tired. I feel inspired by you. Here’s mine. [Edebiri puts on a face mask that matches Lee Sung Jin’s]
LEE: You got to get that mask on.
EDEBIRI: Hydrate the skin.
LEE: Because you might be dehydrated right now.
EDEBIRI: Severely, it could be argued. Wait, you had your premiere.
LEE: I did.
EDEBIRI: What are you doing for the rest of this trip?
LEE: We did so much press. Perhaps too much, one might say.
EDEBIRI: Really? You’re kind of front facing for a director, creator. People know what you look like.
LEE: This is why the mask is on.
EDEBIRI: Wait, did you do a photo shoot for this?
LEE: I just go where I’m told.
EDEBIRI: You did a photo shoot. [Laughs] Are you good at the “talking before” bit?
LEE: I don’t know about good, but it doesn’t make me nervous to do any of it. My parents said that when I was little that I wanted to be Johnny Carson.
EDEBIRI: Wait, so you wanted to be Johnny Carson and now you do wear suits.
LEE: Sometimes I hold a microphone, but only a week leading up to launch and then some Emmy Award season stuff. But you are very now all facing, front facing, behind the camera facing, theater facing.
EDEBIRI: Addicted to pain.
LEE: Do you think that’s why?
EDEBIRI: Maybe there’s something a little bit masochistic about it. Do you ever feel this way? I’m like, “How lucky I get to do the thing that I love and be tortured by the thing that I love. If I was just being tortured by a job that I had no passion for at all, that would probably be—
LEE: It’s far worse, the inside voice.
EDEBIRI: That’s also any imaginative child. My inner voice is very loud.
LEE: I saw an Instagram post that said our inner monologue is actually our parents’ voice from a certain age in childhood.
EDEBIRI: Whoa.
LEE: They studied 3000 adults and without fail everyone’s inner voice is actually the voice of one of your parents.
EDEBIRI: I do that all the time where I’m like, “I read this amazing thing on an Instagram post.”
LEE: I know. It’s so sad.
EDEBIRI: It’s devastating.
LEE: There’s this one interviewer last week that was like, “You seem really well read. What was the last book you’ve read?” I was like, “Dude, I haven’t read a book in eight years.”
EDEBIRI: No, that can’t be a real number. I know you’re busy with your life, but eight is crazy. I’m going to send you a novella. We can get you a book.
LEE: And I don’t even want to say what the last book was eight years ago.
EDEBIRI: I really want to know.
LEE: It’s not really a book either. It was Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, which is just pictures of psychedelic words floating around. That doesn’t—
EDEBIRI: Even count. Do you remember The Midnight Gospel?
LEE: I love The Midnight Gospel. I can’t believe it didn’t get another season. That was my favorite shit.
EDEBIRI: I can, because it genuinely is something that’s so special and unique where you’re like, “Well, yeah, of course they couldn’t figure out how to bottle that.”
LEE: If everybody loved that show, reality would stop.
EDEBIRI: Of course.
LEE: People can’t like it too much so that the hamster wheel can keep going.
EDEBIRI: Yesterday we were backstage, and for whatever reason started reminiscing about COVID. We were just like, “Remember when you could see the mountains from the middle of downtown L.A. and the dolphins came back in the East River in New York?” Literally, it happened. We were all there. Nature was celebrating. She was making herself beautiful and pure again. Then the collective decision as a species was like, “Fuck that. We’re doubling down, bitch.” Never been more sick. I was like, “Well, yeah, because we are the virus. Literally the planet is trying to kill us again.”
LEE: Are you a big conspiracy theory person?
EDEBIRI: I dabble.
LEE: There’s a big thing right now that the billionaire elites with the war and different pandemic viruses are trying to lower the population because there’s too many of us.
EDEBIRI: Can I be honest? Don’t even need to see that to go, “Yeah, good chance.”
LEE: And then people are going crazy because apparently there were files that confirmed Epstein emailing virologists and shit, being like, “Very interesting what you proposed about starting a pandemic,” or something like that. I’m paraphrasing, but…
EDEBIRI: Yeah, that does feel a bit like the most extreme version of paraphrasing. “Amazing job. What if we called it, hmm, COVID?”
LEE: That’s probably closer to what really happened.
EDEBIRI: Billionaires used to make libraries and want to send people to schools in suits and build railroads. Obviously, they’re for sure doing evil stuff, but they wanted to be remembered well. Now people just want to be remembered, period. If we can make a working class that is brain dead and will make AI slop and then work in the factories and then drink the tainted water while we’re all going to awards shows, then rock on.
LEE: The award shows got to keep going.
EDEBIRI: They have to.
LEE: You’ve done a lot of award shows.
EDEBIRI: I’ve been to a few. I would say that you have as well. I’ve been to award shows where you’ve done very well for yourself.
LEE: You’ve done well longer than I have.
EDEBIRI: I don’t really agree with that, but I’ll let you say it. I’m not going to be rude.
LEE: The first awards run is actually pretty enticing. Does it wane?
EDEBIRI: The first one was the craziest one for me. I just remember feeling really terrified. Also I started to win and that was really scary because I had this fear like, “Oh no, what if I have to keep doing this?” Or “What if people are going to be like, ‘She didn’t deserve it.’”
LEE: There’s that.
EDEBIRI: All I want to do is be like John Carroll Lynch. I just want to keep working. I want to be Steve Zahn. I want to be Michael Stuhlbarg. I want to be CCH Pounder, let me name a Black character actress. But I really was freaked out. And weirdly, the subsequent years where I’ve been fortunate enough to be nominated but I haven’t really won, it’s so much more fun because you just hang out with people.
LEE: You handle it very well, though. At those things, it’s always you, Joanna [Calo], and Lionel [Boyce] that I gravitate towards because it’s just three very sane, normal people who are on the same frequency.
EDEBIRI: That sounds like the group. I like having little pockets of humanity where we can chill. But you see how it can make people miserable.
LEE: Oh, totally.
EDEBIRI: Or irritated or not grateful, and that’s such a waste of what a fun, random experience this is. At the Golden Globes, I made bingo because I was like, “This is ridiculous.” We all played bingo throughout.
LEE: No way. My table was not as fun. Although the people there were lovely. You’ve been in the thick of this play [Proof], getting ready for opening night. And that role is pretty heavy. You’re dealing with grief and the fear of losing your mind. Are you able to leave work at work and not have it sort of leak into your day?
EDEBIRI: No. The rehearsal process and previews was a really good run at, they call it “de-rolling.” It’s a theater practice where it’s like, “How do I get this role off of my body and make sure that this is rehearsal, this is performance, and this is my life?” Because this is so much more of my day, you’re in this space of concentrated emotion and action for hours, which is longer than a film take. I’ve had to teach myself how to let it go and trust that I don’t need to be miserable because I can be like that on film. I have to be in a sad head space pretty much for the whole day. That’s unsustainable for eight shows a week. I would love to have an excuse to be like, “Sorry guys, I can’t talk to anybody for four months because I’m like a play.” But then you’re like, “Right, I’m an adult human being. I can’t do that.”
LEE: No, you’re here right now day after, which is quite nice.
EDEBIRI: I respect you, as I said. Are you an only child?
LEE: You’re the second person that said that this week and I’m offended. I’m an older brother. I really don’t think I give only child energy. Is that what’s happening?
EDEBIRI: I’m an only, so now I’m offended.
LEE: You do not give only child energy.
EDEBIRI: So if you’re with somebody that’s anxious, do you feel then you’ll become—
LEE: I’ll become avoidant. Do you sometimes wonder who you really are?
EDEBIRI: Yeah, but I don’t like arguing. I know that that is textbook avoidant, but I don’t think it’s avoidant. I don’t enjoy arguing and I’m like, if we can figure this out before, then that’s my dream scenario.
LEE: Yes.
EDEBIRI: And then if we need to, we need to, but I don’t like it. I am actually probably more avoidant. I’m kind of like a cat.
LEE: Do you own a cat?
EDEBIRI: No, I own the cutest dog ever, Gromit. He’s scratched his cornea twice this week because he’s jealous of the attention I’ve been getting.
LEE: Do you want to own a cat?
EDEBIRI: No.
LEE: Me neither. I’m a little scared of them, to be honest.
EDEBIRI: They don’t have eyebrows.
LEE: Have you ever been in an altered state and in that altered state, you feel like you’re entering their realm? I looked at a cat once in an altered state and the cat was like, “Hey, this is our turf. You’ve entered our dimension.”
EDEBIRI: You would love CATS: The Jellicle Ball.
LEE: What’s that?
EDEBIRI: It’s a show that’s on right now. It’s a musical that’s based off of Cats, but it’s at a ball.
LEE: Thank god you didn’t say it was a book. [Laughs]
EDEBIRI: I wouldn’t dare. What about graphic novels?
LEE: I love graphic novels. It’s just there’s so many emails and scripts, as you know.
EDEBIRI: To include emails in your supplemental reading is wild.
LEE: There are words!
EDEBIRI: There are simply so many words. There’s billboards all over this city. Who’s going to read the signage on the stores, on the places of business?
LEE: No, there is a word count cap on my brain.
EDEBIRI: And Instagram, of course.
LEE: How many hours do you think you spend on Instagram daily?
EDEBIRI: I could look and it would really hurt my feelings. I started doing this thing which is how I know I’m unwell. You can do the limits on your phone. I put a cap for one minute a day.
LEE: That’s wilder than anything that’s been said in this interview.
EDEBIRI: At first, I really felt like I was doing something revolutionary. I really was feeling myself doing something very powerful. I had to have an intent. I couldn’t go just to kill time. It really had to be purposeful. And also I was like, “Oh, I have to make my own opinions about something because I’m wasting time if I’m looking at the comments. I have to decide how I feel about something.” The moment that I started to falter or stray in any way, the minute left and it really felt radical for the first few weeks of this. Obviously now I’ve come to a point where I’ve just started hitting ignore. That feels like shame but I’ve gotten my screen time down.
LEE: Would you want to be at a place someday where you could just delete your social media?
EDEBIRI: I wanted to delete it for my 30th birthday and then I signed a brand deal with Chanel, so I can’t. But I really would. It’s so not good for all of us.
LEE: It’s extremely bad.
EDEBIRI: I got into Reddit when I deleted my social media and that’s like the gateway. I mean, that’s like going from weed to meth.
LEE: From everything I hear, meth is great. [Laughs] Reddit is so much worse. There’s so many more opinions.
EDEBIRI: Would you ever listen to an audiobook?
LEE: You know what? I’d be open to that.
EDEBIRI: Naomi Klein has some really cool books, but she had this book called The Shock Doctrine from a few years ago. It was about neoliberal economics, but she had this book called Doppelganger that I really liked. The audiobook, you might like, but she has a social doppelganger. She’s this woman called Naomi Wolf, who is a conspiracy theorist and a feminist author, but her feminism is very different from Naomi Klein’s. She talks about this polarization that we’re all experiencing and connects it with her other books a bit too. It’s like a little more narrative, a little less fact-y.
LEE: If you started a book club, I would join.
EDEBIRI: A “no book” book club? I would start that for you. By the way, we literally didn’t even talk about season two enough.
LEE: Oh, no, please. I’ve done that all week, this is so much better.
EDEBIRI: Great. You’re welcome.
LEE: But please watch. I would love to know your thoughts.
EDEBIRI: We almost watched it the other night and then I was like, “Oh, it’s not out yet.”
LEE: Let me know what you think this weekend.
EDEBIRI: I’m so excited to see it. When do you go to Philly?
LEE: Right now.
EDEBIRI: Oh, shit. Are you going to come back anytime soon?
LEE: I’m driving back tonight pretty late. Maybe after your show tomorrow?
EDEBIRI: If you guys are still out, I’ll come.
LEE: Okay.
EDEBIRI: Text me.
