‘It was very comforting to be childlike in my love for something’: Beef star Joseph Lee on the Netflix show’s nuanced portrayal of Asian-American men
- Joseph Lee, ‘hot dad’ sculptor George Nakai in Beef, says Netflix show is that rare one where Asian-Americans aren’t ‘projections of the mainstream white gaze’
- He tells the Post he is happy to be in a show about Asian-Americans where he doesn’t have to overperform, and talks about his own work as an artist
Actor Joseph Lee could not be more different from George “Joji” Nakai, the character he plays in dark-comedy drama series Beef on Netflix.
Nakai is a talentless sculptor born into art-world nepotism, and a stay-at-home husband brimming with toxic positivity. Yet they share a similar kind of lifestyle.
“I just live my life. My wife and I generally have a very pleasant, normal, quiet lifestyle. The first thing we do in the morning is to share a cup of coffee or tea, talk about how grateful we are and go for a walk,” Lee tells the Post.
“The prep work [for the series] was just continuing to engage and connect with the person I love most, which is my wife.”
There are days where I will sit in front of a blank canvas for hours and not even put down a stroke, just staring mindlessly into a canvas, but it’s all part of the process
The 35-year-old actor and painter can relate to certain traits of his character, though. “George is somebody that’s very much childlike in his purity for the things that he loves, and I wanted to tap into that,” he says.
“As men, we sometimes make it difficult for ourselves to enjoy things, projecting [being] ‘masculine’ or trying to be cool.