In a latest episode of Variety’s Actors on Actors, Ali Wong sat down with Jason Segel and talked about why she received into performing from comedy and her expertise engaged on Beef — together with filming the finale episode and what concerning the sequence she’s most pleased with.
Before they received into Beef, Jason, who additionally comes from a comedy background, requested Ali if she had at all times wished to “parlay” into performing. “Not really,” she replied. “I just wanted to tell jokes for a living.”
However, Ali defined that she had been working as a temp for a very long time and that she started performing in sitcoms to be able to justify doing unpaid rise up units at evening.
As the 2 started speaking about Beef and its escalating feud, Ali revealed that Beef’s script was nonetheless being written as they had been capturing, including that she didn’t even know concerning the finale whereas filming.
Like Jason then described, the finale episode “so clearly crystallizes the theme that these two people are essentially the same. There are even moments where [Ali’s character Amy and Steven Yeun’s character Danny] switch voices and [are] like, ‘I am you.’”
“And I totally didn’t understand that that’s what was happening,” Ali mentioned of the voice swap. While the sequence creator and finale director, Lee “Sunny” Sung-jin, had Ali memorize Steven’s strains along with her personal, he didn’t inform her why they had been doing so — solely to belief him.
“Have you ever filmed in a forest for a week?” Ali then requested Jason earlier than describing the expertise of filming the finale, calling it “wild.”
Because they filmed components of the finale for Beef at 2 a.m., Ali and Steven needed to run round at midnight. Though Ali acknowledged it seems to be cool on digital camera, she mentioned that, in actuality, it was terrifying and uncomfortable. “I felt like Shelley Long in Troop Beverly Hills,” she commented.
Unlike Ali, Steven wasn’t fazed by the placement or timing. “Steven had been on The Walking Dead for seven years in the suburbs of Atlanta at three in the morning, running away from the zombies,” Ali mentioned.
In truth, throughout rehearsals, Steven fell out of Danny’s truck (which had simply crashed over a hill) onto his shoulder and crawled via the dust thrice. “I was like, ‘You really like doing it?’” Ali informed Jason. “And then [Steven] looked at me and was like, ‘I love it.’”
Referencing Jason’s newest work, Shrink, Ali then joked that she’d a lot slightly play a personality like Harrison Ford’s Dr. Paul Rhoades — sitting for many scenes and cracking jokes.
Later of their dialog, Jason requested Ali what about Beef she’s most pleased with, and he or she mentioned the forged — significantly as a result of Beef has an all-Asian American forged. “I do think that when you have an all-Asian American cast, which is rare, then the people get to be people,” she mentioned.
“Because, now, when people refer to people in our show, they use other descriptors to describe the characteristics of the person rather than their race,” Ali defined. “Instead of saying, ‘Oh, the Asian husband,’ they’ll say, ‘Oh, the guy who has the sick cardigans, who’s really positive and rides the bicycle.’”
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