In Netflix’s ‘Beef,’ Ali Wong’s Calabasas Compound Is an Opulent Prison of Her Own Making

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In constructing Amy’s home through elaborate soundstages and the façade of a real house, production designer Grace Yun sought to convey a palpable sense of existential dread beneath the opulent taste and covetable success. Yun asked herself, “What does it look like if her inner psychology drives her achievement-oriented socioeconomic status? And how does her curated aesthetic belie a repressed sadness?” Drawing inspiration from midcentury-modern style homes, the design incorporates plastered concrete-like walls and wooden slats—a motif inspired by Wong’s real home—visually echoing the design of the prison cell Danny’s cousin later goes to due to the rivalry. In this stylish home, Amy is “trapped in the life that she made,” Yun reveals. 

Amy with her business’ out-of-touch acquirer Jordan Forster (Maria Bello). Amy’s home is reminiscent of Jordan’s mansion, a museum-like castle that is heavily culturally appropriative, though Jordan’s upstages Amy’s in every way 

Photo: Andrew Cooper / Courtesy of Netflix

Clerestory windows, skylights, and long sliver windows either obscure views of the outside or offer a look into George’s art studio or the closed patio, where he plays with their daughter. “We wanted to create a lot of sight lines that would continue looking into the house itself,” Yun tells AD. “[With] this feeling of, ‘Yeah, it’s a nice open-plan, but you’re also feeling a bit trapped,’ you can go in circles in there, if you think about it.” The stark perpendicular lines further evoke a feeling of heaviness and entrapment. “I feel like how this house must feel,” says George’s mom Fumi (Patti Yusatake), after returning from the hospital because of an incident caused by the rivalry. Dressed in a polished beige jumpsuit while buttering a slice of toast—one of the few times a meal is prepared and the family is gathered in the kitchen—Amy dismisses her colorful mother-in-law’s advice: “More curves! Humanize this space!”   

In fact, the only curves in Amy’s home can be found in George’s pottery and the $100,000 Tamago chair made by his late father. George’s vases, a stay-at-home-dad pastime rather than a career, convey a stark disconnect from Amy’s ambition and creative drive. “Early on, Sonny [series creator Lee Sung Jin] and I thought these amorphous blob shapes represented how George floats through life and doesn’t really restrict himself,” Yun explained in an interview with Netflix’s Tudum. Similarly, the Tamago—a three-legged stone chair shaped like an egg and molded to Fumi’s rear—is nonsensical and purposeless, a distracting shade of green in Amy’s otherwise austere, monochrome home.