When Young Mazino read a description of the character Paul Cho in BEEF, he immediately felt seen. 

“He’s physically big, but overshadowed by his older brother, likes to play video games, has a hard time holding a job, [and] didn't go to college,” the 31-year-old Korean American actor tells Tudum. “And I was like, wow, this is exactly for me, this is eerily similar to my life.” 

That is, if Mazino had not found acting. 

In the new, rage-fueled series BEEF, Mazino plays the little bro to protagonist Danny (Steven Yeun). Although Paul first comes off as a sweet, hot loser who’d rather play video games than pay attention to the schemes and turmoil swirling around him, he’s “on the cusp of breaking out of his mold,” says Mazino. He “just wants to break free,” and uses the events of the series as a catalyst for change. “Once there’s a drastic interruption in your day-to-day, it forces introspection,” Mazino continues. 

In the actor’s own life, that drastic interruption came when Mazino was about to turn 21 years old. He was working as a lifeguard for Ocean City Beach Patrol in Maryland and was called to respond to an incident. “By the time I got there, [someone] had drowned,” says Mazino. “One of the girls [involved] was just sitting there with a blank, thousand-mile stare. I remember looking at that as you never know. Life can be so fleeting.” He knew then he had to take a chance, move to New York, and give an acting career a go. 

Ten years later, that decision is paying off — Mazino is about to make a name for himself in Lee Sung Jin’s high-strung dark comedy. The packed-with-potential character he plays makes for a perfect breakout role for Mazino, who was in the process of reevaluating his relationship to acting when the role came along. Now, he’s on the verge of a level of fame he hasn’t quite processed yet. “I mean, I have no expectations,” he says. “As long as I’m alive and healthy and have food to eat and somewhere to sleep, I’ll be good.”

When talking to Mazino, you don’t encounter the roiling anger that drives much of BEEF. The series kicks off with a road rage incident between Danny and Amy (Ali Wong). Stewing over the run-in, and harboring issues rooted in deeper trauma, both continue to escalate the conflict in ways that affect their families. After Danny pees on Amy’s floor, she retaliates by attempting to catfish him, using pictures of her white employee. Only it turns out to be Paul’s Instagram account she’s contacting, not Danny’s. When Paul figures out she’s been fooling him, he’s not mad. Instead, he falls for her, unaware of the growing tension between Amy and Danny. 

Like Paul and Danny, Mazino was also raised by Korean parents. Growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, he tried his hand at a number of extracurriculars at the behest of his mom, including playing violin, a constant until college, where he fell into what he describes as existential depression. He knew how hard his parents had worked to get him there, but he didn’t want to follow a predictable path of getting a degree and finding a job, followed by marriage and kids. “I kind of just felt like things were so mundane and gray and I’d be stuck in traffic in the deplorable nine-to-five, wanting to just bash my brains out,” he says. 

Even though Mazino was nearly broke, he decided to move to New York without finishing college. He worked a series of odd jobs before landing at a luxury cosmetics company, where he rose through the ranks to become a senior analyst. But his boss could tell he wasn’t invested. In the meantime, Mazino had started classes at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, landing a few bit parts along the way on shows like New Amsterdam and Blue Bloods. Faced with the choice to commit himself to the corporate world or drop out altogether, he did the latter. Then the pandemic hit. “I had no survival job,” Mazino says. “So I started dabbling in stocks. I was dabbling in crypto, Dogecoin, doing whatever I could to make money, which of course fuels my character work later.” (Paul — naturally — also has his hands in crypto.) Mazino eventually left the city, embarking on a semi-nomadic life, biking cross-country and making a documentary with friends. He was coming to terms with the idea that acting might be the path for him after all, when he got a request to audition for a new show with a strange name: BEEF.

When Mazino saw that stars like Yeun and Wong were attached, he assumed he wouldn’t get the gig. But soon enough he was hanging with Yeun on a basketball court in Pasadena, getting to know each other better before filming began. “By the end of the game there was this moment, we were both in the air, I was trying to make it in, [Yeun] was trying to block me,” he says. “And when we came down from that, we just instantly, we looked at each other and we’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s it. That’s the energy.’” 

As for his relationship with Wong, the two actors prepared for their scenes together with long walks on the beach in Venice, talking about family. And their relationship on screen does get intimate. Well, sort of. “The scene [in question] was probably much more raunchy than intimate, but yeah,” Mazino says. 

Performing the Episode 5 sequence where Amy and Paul finally consummate their flirtation was “technical,” Mazino says, adding that Wong did take him by surprise when her character says, “I want you to spit on it.” “I remember trying not to laugh,” he says. “The sexiness immediately disappeared.”

Most of the time, Mazino felt he didn’t have to stretch to play Paul. In fact, he says, he leaned deeper into his own personality than he has in most of his previous roles. “One of my biggest critiques [from my] training is that I tend to mumble and it’s hard to understand me and I don’t articulate,” he says. He reached out to Lee. “I was like, ‘Hey, if I ever need to articulate more, you let me know. I’m conscious of that,’” Mazino recalls. “But he was like, ‘No, no, no, it works for the character.’ Because Paul’s not this extroverted, eloquent guy.’” 

While Mazino wanted to bring as much of himself as possible to the character, he also aimed to subtly evolve him over the course of the season. As Paul comes out of his shell — buoyed by his relationship with Amy — his posture changes. Mazino wanted to show that Paul grew physically as well as emotionally.

Mazino is fully aware of the impact BEEF may have on Asian representation in Hollywood. The specter of the industry’s history of offensively stereotyped Asian characters still looms, and BEEF, in all its nasty, messed-up glory, challenges that. “It’s refreshing to just finally be a real-ass human being that’s just as toxic, that’s just as real,” he says. “I don't think we have to be like, ‘Look at us, we are just as human.’ I don't think we have to express that. I think we’re past that now. It’s more like, ‘Look at the multifaceted humans and the human condition that exists in this culture.’” 

But even before BEEF reaches a wide audience, Mazino’s already secured the approval of one tough audience: his parents, who watched screeners of the series. It meant a lot, he says, given how disappointed his dad had been when he dropped out of college. “I get it,” says the actor. “They have worked and toiled their whole lives.” But his father reached out. “He gave me a call and was like, ‘You did good.’” 

Even as his star rises, Mazino is leaving his future wide open. “I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next month or where I’m going to be, but I don't mind that,” he says. “I might just sell all my stuff …and travel and just get lost.” 

Something tells us disappearing won’t be quite so easy from here on out. 

BEEF Season 1 TrailerRevenge is best served raw.

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