2023 Emmy Nominee ‘Beef’ Casting Directors Charlene Lee, Claire Koonce On the Importance of Chemistry

Charlene Lee and Claire Koonce served as the casting directors for Netflix’s critically acclaimed limited series Beef by Lee Sung Jin (or Sonny, as he goes by). Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, both Lee and Koonce discuss the importance of chemistry between the actors. They share how Zoom both helped and hurt in the casting process. Finally, they talk about why it pays to be nice to the mothers of child actors.

Claire Koonce: That’s correct.

Claire Koonce: A lot! We get asked this question a bit about how to build a cast around the two of them. I will say that there is a fair amount of factoring in their skill sets in their chemistry with a lot of other characters, but it’s also based on Sonny’s writing in the world that he was creating and the tone of the story that we’re telling. So we’re trying to find people that have chemistry frankly with all of that.  But I will say that the two roles that we focused on right away were Steven’s little brother and Ali’s husband (George and Paul). Because chemistry was going to be so key to those characters.

Charlene Lee: Fortunately, even though we were in the middle of the pandemic, we were able to have in-person sessions so we were able to do chemistry reads for those roles. I mean they were very complicated with a lot of testing and logistically not the easiest, but we fortunately were able to do chemistry readings in person and on Zoom, which I think was instrumental to getting that chemistry.

Charlene Lee: To be honest that role was one of the hardest roles to cast and the process that took the longest because I think that character is extremely complicated just because you do have to have some empathy for him and understand why he and Ali’s character are together. If you don’t believe that relationship at all, then the stakes aren’t there, so it is a really tricky balance. But I just think Joe gave so much humanity to that character, who I think very easily could be written off as being very simple-minded or naïve in a lot of ways.

Claire Koonce: I think a lot of people recognize the toxic positivity of George’s character and finding someone to actually nail that instead of nailing our idea of what that is or what the caricature of that is. Actually just finding someone who can earnestly try his best was difficult.  So we really were excited whenever Joe came in, and he was able to kind of nail all the different nuances to George that were needed.

Charlene Lee: I think it’s great that we have Zoom. I think casting has changed so much because so much is virtual now. I think you kind of make do in terms of the chemistry you’re able to gauge. But I think once you get down the line, in-person is so much more clarifying in a lot of ways. I think the challenges are that so much of chemistry is playing off another person, and that’s really (depending on the scene) difficult to do on screen. I think there are ways to make it work as best you can, but there are certain challenges of doing that. Fortunately on Beef, we were further into the pandemic where we were able to do some in-person. But Claire and I had other projects prior to that where it could only be on Zoom and that was that. We were able to make it work. I think of course playing off another person is different on screen versus in person, especially depending on the nature of the scene that you’re auditioning for.

Claire Koonce: Yeah, the wonderful thing about everything being virtual is that it does democratize the process. We’re able to look at talent that can come from anywhere, and they don’t have to be in Los Angeles, for example, or they don’t have to take off work in order to drive to an audition. That sort of thing democratizes the process for a lot of actors, and it allows us to look at a lot more developing actors. But the issue with doing stuff over Zoom is that part of our job in casting is to develop a real sense of not only what an actor is able to do with this character but their full potential as an actor, and that’s something that we can so much more easily assess in the room and in person. So that part of our jobs has become a lot harder, but Charlene and I do a lot to assimilate that relationship. We do our best to try to get to know people as authentically and honestly as possible with the tools that we have.  It presents a lot of challenges I will say, but it opens up a lot of possibilities. So, to be honest, that’s what we utilized a lot on this project in particular because it was cast during the pandemic. We got to capitalize on those opportunities and had to figure out how to make sure that doing this virtually wouldn’t compromise the process.

Charlene Lee: I think you know the thing that immediately jumped off the page was how complicated the characters are because they’re not all good or all bad; no one is really the villain. No one is completely right either, and so I think you really can build such rich characters. Which really was such a fun process to find in the audition process just because I think they were just such complicated people and so true to actual people, which is so rare to find. So it was such a fun challenge to bring that to life.

Claire Koonce: I was going to say such nuances and such specificity! The type of rage and a lot of those inexplicable emotions he  managed to capture so specifically. I think that that was apparent from the page, and that’s something that we were so excited to dive into. I think that he has an incredible gift to make people be seen through these characters and that was just really, really rewarding to get to dive into.

Charlene Lee: The other thing I wanted to add is I think kudos to Sonny in terms of being like myself Korean American and capturing the church culture and the different nuances of what it would mean in Asian-American culture. I think that is something  I’d rarely seen, and so it was really refreshing and fun.  I think a lot of the characters in the show reminded me of people I knew so it was such a fun one to do.

Claire Koonce: I didn’t grow up in the same culture, but I felt it!

Charlene Lee: Yeah, and I think it’s something that a lot of people have said to me. They see Ali and Steven in themselves. Neither person is completely in the right. People have said to me that they feel they’ve been both characters in various facets of their life, which I think is really fascinating.

Claire Koonce: Paul had the same thing as George where I think you could write him off as this gamer who doesn’t get his brother and  you could easily blow off the character. But Young approached it with such complexity and earnestness, and I feel like that completely changes the character. Something that was tough for us is it was really important that Paul have a lot of chemistry with Steven’s character Danny, but also as we got more scripts, we realized that the role also has a fair amount of chemistry with Amy. Someone that can bridge the little brother type thing but also definitely see him as a budding young man. It is hard to find all of those nuances, and so again we were really excited to find someone who could really enrich that character.

Charlene Lee: To piggyback off of that, it was the same thing with Joseph’s character, George, because he does forge a relationship with Danny pretending to be Zane. So you realize something that wasn’t as clear until we got more scripts, how important all those  relationships were.

Claire Koonce: The overall chemistry of the cast fitting as a whole tapestry as opposed to Paul just being an extension of Danny and George being an extension of Amy. That was fun to weave together.

Claire Koonce: There are background casting directors who fill a lot of those non-speaking roles. I will say that we did find the people if they had one little line or whatever like Steven’s teaching a kid how to play a guitar.  We find the people for those specific interactions.

Charlene Lee: It’s interesting. I think like so much of the casting processes you have to pivot based on what the specific needs are of what you’re working on. Specifically speaking, what was so interesting is, for example, the church where we had to cast a group of Korean children and you know there was some difficulty in finding enough kids for those scenes. I have to give a shout out to Evan Chung, who played child Danny and his mom. We were talking, and she said, ‘Oh, I can see if any of Evan’s friends from his after school activities would be interested in auditioning.’ So some of those kids actually wound up being in the scene. I think that’s the thing that’s so fun about casting is it’s always different every time, and there are always unique challenges. But that’s what makes it so rewarding at the same time is that navigating those waters is always a different thing.

Claire Koonce: So the name actually comes from our initials Charlene Lee, Claire Koonce, and we felt that was fortuitous that it came out as CL|CK casting. Charlene and I both really love our jobs. We started in  management and we care a lot about actors and we care a lot about people and  treating people with empathy and kindness. We found that we have a lot of similar values and so we found that between us we work really well together to be able to do these jobs that we love. While treating people the way that we want to treat them and also hopefully continuing to work on the type of work that really excites us. That’s kind of how  CL|CK Casting  came together. We were friends first, and we always joked that we “business dated” for a while, then we got “business married.”

Charlene Lee: Yeah, I would say to kind of also add to that, a huge reason why Claire and I started working together is we very much approached casting the same way. Always wanting to find new new faces and always keeping an open mind.

Claire Koonce: Or take a face that we know well and see them in a new life.

Charlene Lee: Yeah, exactly, and just try to approach casting with an open mind.  It’s very important to us to think outside the box.  To always search for each role and to make sure that when we come to an agreement with our team that we are picking the best person for each part. Honestly we’re so grateful to this production as well because  everyone was very much of the same mind that we needed to work together to to get it right however long that took, so it was a really special process.

Charlene Lee: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. In particular, I think casting is a process that a lot of people don’t really know much about, so we really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

Claire Koonce: This was a special project for Charlene and I and talking about the casting is always exciting to us, so thank you.