Steven Yeun Rewatches The Walking Dead, Beef, Nope, Minari & More

I'm sitting here with like Tessa Thompson,

LaKeith Stanfield.

I'm tucked away in the corner way in the back.

Somebody from outside while we're shooting

in the middle of the night at like 12:00 AM,

goes like, Yo, that's that dude from Walking Dead.

And I was like, How could you see me?

I'm like, behind, behind, behind.

That was silly and fun.

Hi, I'm Steven Yeun.

And I'm here to revisit scenes from my career.

Let's get started.

[upbeat music]

[Glenn yelling]

[zombies growling]

I deeply have fond memories of this particular moment

because it was kind of like a personal growth moment

for me that you have more agency than you think you do.

Glenn does this huge fight with this walker,

he's avoiding him and fighting him

and then he finally kills him.

[Glenn yelling]

That was improvised and it was the first time I was like

here's like a feeling I have in this moment,

and I want to just do it.

David Galbraith, our focus puller, who recently passed away,

he was like, woo.

And like the whole thing of this whole show

was just like getting his approval.

This role really helped set a really wonderful tone for me.

I got to work with incredible actors, incredible directors,

incredible writers and talent and crew.

I learned how to be a professional.

I learned how to be an artist.

I learned how to be a good human,

and I learned how to be a great collaborator.

I'm very, very thankful for like this experience.

It was kind of this like fundamental, you know,

foundation for a lot of the choices that I made afterwards.

[upbeat music]

Take control man.

I am in control.

That's Young Mazino.

You're about to know this guy.

He's a good one.

Young is such an incredible actor.

[Danny] What's your plan then?

Go play ball.

No, like in your life, like right now,

in your one precious life, what is your plan?

This is the Cho bros, the Cho brothers.

You're gonna look at Danny Cho and Paul Cho,

who are the children of immigrants,

and they're kind of trying to just make it

and figure it out.

Life is precious, man.

You can't like waste it.

You know, you gotta take action.

If you're hungry, eat a steak.

If you wanna feel the sun on your face,

like look it's right there, you know.

See something you like, baby bro, go get it.

Beef has been so fun, so wonderful.

I just remember talking with Sung Lee about it

when he pitched me the idea of like,

hey, I'm thinking about this show about road rage.

And I was like, oh, road rage,

I'm into that.

And then like Ali came on board,

and I was like, oh, that makes sense.

And then it just kept making sense.

It's fuckin' hilarious and sad and happy and angry

and all the feelings.

All right, what are you and boys gonna do?

Like what's, what's your boys' plan?

It's easy.

Three 10 x trays, one K to 10K

10K to a hundred, hundred a million, boom.

You're just saying higher numbers.

It's about seeing the humanity in yourself.

We never approached this in a way

where we were conscious so much so of like

what it was saying about Asian American storytelling,

and we were more just like let's make sure that like

we are being authentic and as honest as we can

in every part of this expression,

down to our wonderful production designer,

Grace Yun, Helen Huang making our costumes,

to Sung Lee's writing, to every character and actor

being a part of this like top to bottom.

Like really holding our authenticity and culture

for ourselves so that we can then just explore these people

and the humanity of these people.

Hopefully everyone can see Danny in themselves.

We're all weird and gross and funny

and sad and hilarious, and we're all the things.

[upbeat music]

All right folks, let's meet back here

at 3:00 PM, okay?

Don't, it's not that serious.

[Man] Okay, alright, cool.

[Squeeze] It's like serious, but it's not that,

but I'm ready though.

Boots Riley, a genius, the man.

I just left doing Walking Dead for seven seasons

in which the style of that show was just like

busting through every day.

Just like rolling around in the dirt,

screaming, crying, going nuts.

And then I got to play this role next,

which was more a vibe.

I like Squeeze 'cause he got to just kind of be,

and he was kind of sitting in the pocket of a knowing

that maybe not everybody, every other character, knew.

There's something he's hiding for himself

that he's this union organizer.

We're gonna give them our day.

We need to have enough to cover our basic necessities.

Human decency.

[Man] Yeah!

Is anyone not down?

Speak now.

Nah, fuck that, Squeeze, we ready.

This was the first time where me personally as an actor

I was like, oh, I'm allowed to just stand there

and feel the reality of the moment and that's enough.

[upbeat music]

[speaking in foreign language]

Han Ye-ri is incredible.

She carried Monica, the character of Monica,

deep in her body,

coming all the way from Korea to like play this part.

Truly, we are blessed that we got to have her in this film.

[speaking in foreign language]

This script kind of found me in a crazy way.

I read it and I was just like, whoa, this is so everything

and so simple and beautiful and truthful and honest.

And it was so sparse.

Like the words weren't like overly dense,

and you could like see all the rhythm to it in there.

It was so nice.

Two days before we started, I was in my hotel room

in Tulsa bugging out, how am I gonna do this?

All I could see was like a version of this character

where he was just like this concept that was really far away

from me of like my parents and their generation

and who they are to me.

And so they were always kind of rendered as this like idea.

[speaking in foreign language]

I kind of came to, I called my mom and I was just like

complaining about it,

and I came to this understanding by the end.

Oh, I am my father, I can experience this life.

And it was when I was able to like break the image

of my own parents to myself

that I can just see them in love as full human beings.

And that was when I really understood

the character, my parents.

It was wild.

[upbeat music]

You haven't seen the Gordy sketch on SNL?

I mean, they pretty much nailed it better than I could.

No, Saturday Night Live?

Jordan is the man for him to write such a simple moment

but have like so many layers that he wanted to explore

underneath it was pretty incredible.

We really, really worked on Jupe quite extensively.

He doesn't show up too much in the film,

but we really went there in our conversations.

We had many, many, many conversations about

who this person is and how he's made

and what moves him.

It's Kattan, he's just crushing it.

He is a force of nature.

He is killing on that stage.

Yeah, it's legendary.

This particular scene is someone

maybe displacing their memory of a trauma

that they don't really know how to cope with or deal with.

And so he only knows how to encase it and entomb it

in this story that he remembers

that someone else said about him.

I think Jordan is such an incredible, brave filmmaker.

The ways in which things are scary

on the outside have been seen,

but like the internal horror is really freaky

that he's exploring.

The production designer, she was incredible.

I remember walking into Jupe's office

and into that Gordy's panic room

and seeing the level of detail,

what he's written on the walls.

The details were outrageous,

and I remember being in there being like,

oh this is his prison.

Like this is, he constructed his own prison.

The masterful direction of Jordan Peele

was something that really helped me get into this character.

Jupe was a sad guy to play.

He's, he's unwell.

[upbeat music]

[speaking in foreign language]

This project was also so amazing for me.

I got to work with two incredible actors,

Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo,

also two incredible human beings.

I got to meet with Director Lee.

He gave me a big hug and he was like

I'd love for you to play Ben.

And I was like, okay.

Like I'm not gonna say no.

I was like, so you're gonna have him be like, you know,

like an Asian American, right?

Like where he like speaks mostly English,

and he's like, yeah, yeah.

And then I went home and then he was like

you're gonna speak all Korean

and you're gonna be native Korean.

And I was like, oh shit.

[speaking in foreign language]

Then I don't know how I, what I'm thinking.

Like I was like, oh, you're gonna have to speak Korean.

You're gonna have to speak Korean really well.

You're gonna have to play this part

that you've never played before.

You're gonna work with this director

that you've never worked with before.

That was really exciting.

I was really blessed by this role.

It helped me explore a lot of things about myself

that I had put away since I'd immigrated to America

when I was four.

And so it was really transformative for me.

I'm very thankful for this role.

Surprisingly, not as cringey as I thought I'd be.

I am so grateful that I got to be a part of these things

and work with these people, a very lucky life.

So I'm very thankful for this.

Thank you Vanity Fair for going on this journey with me.

[upbeat music]