Beef director Jake Schreier sits down with Awards Daily to relate the joy of his Emmy nomination as more of an overall statement of the show as a whole. He shares how creator Lee Sung Jin’s writing was so visually interesting that it made him want to work harder to get that across. Finally, he talks about creating the show in a collaboration with the cast and crew that urged them all to operate at their very best.
Note: Creator Lee Sung Jin goes by Sonny and is referred to that way in this interview.
Awards Daily: What was your reaction upon hearing the news of your first Emmy nomination?
Jake Schreier: Honestly, it’s just a very nice surprise and, more than anything, that it goes with, you know, many nominations for the show. I think Sonny, Steven (Yeun) and Ali (Wong) have talked about it. We couldn’t have made it if not for the close family atmosphere on set for all the people that did get recognized and the folks that didn’t but also deserve it. It just felt nice that the show connected and that so many people were recognized for the hard work that they did on it.
Awards Daily: Can you tell us what went into the car chase scene at the end of episode 9 setting up their big fall at the end? I particularly enjoyed the capturing of Danny just giving her that middle finger right before they go off the cliff.
Jake Schreier: Yeah, Larkin (Seiple) did a great job capturing that. The interior car stuff is actually on a stage with wind machines. I thought what was so beautiful about Sonny’s script was that we would match when they first met but now they have upgraded their cars. It used to be this white SUV and a red truck; now it is a red Hummer and a white G wagon. It’s kind of this idea, you know the show has existed in such a sense of character perspective the whole time, and that was something Sonny and I talked about a lot. Really establishing that in the way the opening chases presented that this was kind of an opportunity to take a step back from it and see a little bit wider. There’s a moment where we go to a high angle shot of the car driving and then Bobby (Krlic)’s music comes in over Bjork. It creates the sense that at this point these two characters might do this forever if something doesn’t happen. That flip off is sort of an echo of that. It’s like we’re seeing all of these things that we saw before and there’s this idea of repetition and finally taking a more objective view of that as opposed to the subjective view that we’ve been involved in the whole time. That felt like more than just obviously it’s fun to photograph a chase and get to do action, but really being a new sense of perspective to the way that is presented in the episode. That felt like the most interesting part about directing it.
Awards Daily: Another part that particularly stood out for me in the episode is the standoff with the police. That this space is at first a place of luxury in Jordan’s house and then we’re surrounded by smoke, and there’s that red light and it creates this real sense of dread and confinement. What was the thought process in creating that scene?
Jake Schreier: I’m not going to lie, some of it was production constraints like we couldn’t show an entire SWAT team outside so we tried again to embrace that idea of we’ve been so perspective-based the whole show. Like how does this feel on the inside in the midst of that confusion? How can we kind of take that constraint and make it into an artistic choice of what it is like to experience that uncertainty and the murkiness of these characters together in the situation and what that brings out of them? I think what is most exciting is that in the midst of all that action we have one of Steven’s strongest moments in the whole season where he says to his brother Paul, “You gotta get away from me, man. You gotta get away from me.” That was something written beautifully and Steven brought something more to it. That is what’s so great about Sonny’s writing is that you know he’s never just going for a genre thing. It’s this mix of real emotion and character underneath something that’s really kind of fun and heightened and trying to get the balance right was the real challenge of the episode.
Awards Daily: You were one of three directors on this show, so what kind of communication was done with Hikari and Lee Sung Jin in crafting the whole show?
Jake Schreier: We were all kind of together in it from the beginning, and Sonny and I have been friends for six years so I was going to talk to him about the show whether I was working on it or not. Then you know obviously he’s a director making a great debut directing his first episode at the end. But he is also the showrunner so the two of us were on set together the whole time. It was a very collaborative relationship in crafting what we wanted this to be. I think my job as director to some degree is not just coming up with ideas about how to execute something but also being able to articulate to a showrunner and to the person who wrote these episodes what the different craft choices would be, and how they would influence the way that feels and letting them really be a strong participant in what they want to choose and how that would affect things. So I think the whole thing felt beautifully collaborative in that way with Sonny. Somebody who writes very visually and can engage in those conversations and who really wants it to be cinematically expressive. So when you’re working with someone that is asking for that out of you then you really want to rise to that challenge and give it your best.
Awards Daily: The acting uniformly across this show was just fantastic. What was the whole experience with the cast like?
Jake Schreier: It just felt very special. Obviously everyone was at a different point in their careers. Young is someone getting a very early opportunity and just rose to that challenge so incredibly. Obviously Steven is so experienced and Ali was getting to do something outside of her comfort zone but she was really excited to do that. I think beyond that just there was something that just felt very special for the cast in the writing of what the show was in what Sonny had created. That it felt very unique and special and that it was speaking almost inwardly and not outwardly about some of the cultural ideas and in that way actually became more universal. You could just tell how much it meant to everyone on set, and when it means that much to those people that makes you want to give it extra care to what you are working on as well and really listen to them. I just feel they gave so much of themselves to the work and that made it really easy, and made me want to really get into those details and really let them release their ideas for the characters.
Awards Daily: Was there a particular part you were proud of or something that was difficult to overcome in your direction that you were excited that you were able to do?
Jake Schreier: God, there’s so many. The whole season was shot out of order and we shot it more like a long movie. So really, trying to just keep track of all of these arcs, because Sonny writes in this very calculated way. He has these graphs of the character rises and falls, and just trying to make sure on that TV schedule that we could honor that and put it in there. I think you know episode 9 was kind of in its way a bottle episode. Where we were just in that house and we were filming it for a week and it definitely was a lot for a short amount of time. I know we had a lot of fun, like when (Andrew) Santino threw the chair and we had to get that right in one take with it whipping through and hitting Maria Bello. I just think overall being able to deliver on a level of action and scope that was really asked for by the writing on a limited time frame while not running over those character beats and making sure that there were real emotions. You know the episode could have gotten overwhelmed with action. I think when I look back on it, I mean obviously the action was fun, but I think the fact that those moments with Ali and Steven are in there and they feel as emotional as anything else feels like the most special part of episode 9 to me.
Awards Daily: You and creator Lee Sung Jin are up against each other in this category. Any “rivalry” stories about that?
Jake Schreier: [Laughs] We have been working it out on the tennis court and the ping pong table. Letting our competitiveness and aggression out there. No, I think Sonny did an incredible job, especially with this being his first time directing ever. And again, you know he writes in this visual way. So it didn’t feel so different because there is so much of Sonny in what I did in episode 9, and I was there for episode 10 and was happy to help make sure that it went great. Plus Larkin (Seiple) and Grace (Yun) were such a big part of it. Again, I don’t want to overly deflect. It is nice to be nominated but at the same time it just feels like the show is really being recognized on a lot of levels, and we all made it together and that just feels really special. So if we fall out after it we will work through it with racket sports.
