From the moment costume designer Helen Huang got her hands on the script for Beef, the new Netflix and A24 series that’s become something of a cultural phenomenon, she felt she knew one of the lead characters, Danny (Steven Yeun) intimately.
“He was like my stepbrothers, growing up in the San Gabriel Valley,” Huang tells me over Zoom from her office in New York City. “I was friends with guys like him in high school. I knew the identity, and knew that someone like him had never been put on screen before.”
Huang set out on a mission to create a wardrobe that authentically captured the spirit and lifestyle of Asian Americans living in the Los Angeles area. That was an end goal shared by Beef creator Lee Sung Jin, whom Huang refers to by his English name, Sonny. The result: an organic and genuine depiction of Asian American, Southern California culture in Beef, which is being hailed as one of the best new shows on TV, especially for the way each Asian character is a fully formed individual rather than the sidekick comic relief or a bit player. “You never see that on TV,” Huang adds. “Asian men’s likes and dislikes, their preferences, let alone a backstory, are never shown. It’s pretty insane how shallow they’re written sometimes.”
In the case of Beef, Lee assembled a nearly all-Asian cast, with members of the Asian diaspora working on the show behind the scenes, to infuse characters like Danny, his brother Paul (Young Mazino), Amy (Ali Wong), and her husband George (Joseph Lee) with complex character traits. That’s especially true when it comes to the plot for the show, which centers Danny and Amy, who become entangled in a road rage incident that ends up tearing their personal lives to shreds.
“They’re layered individuals,” Huang adds. “I like the fact that, even though Danny and Amy get embroiled in this stuff and do terrible things, you can sympathize with them.” Below, the costume designer—who previously worked on American…
Read the full article here
