When the Netflix anthology series "Beef" premièred, in 2023, it was a revelation in more ways than one. The show, which traced the depths into which two Angelenos descend after a road-rage incident, reintroduced Ali Wong as a dramatic lead, gave Steven Yeun a chance to go darkly comic, and shined a rare light on the issue of Asian American mental health. It also remade the career of its creator, Lee Sung Jin, a seeming overnight success who actually had nearly two decades of TV-comedy writing under his belt. Lee first pitched the show after he stalked another driver for a half hour following a parking-lot dispute; he similarly drew from life for Season 2, which stars Oscar Isaac as Josh, a country-club manager, and Carey Mulligan as his interior-designer wife, Lindsay. The couple are caught on video having a nasty fight by two members of his staff, Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny). The Gen Z employees, about to embark on their own marriage, see the footage as blackmail material--and thus an opportunity to start their next chapter on secure financial footing. As in the first season, the story quickly broadens beyond the central conflict, roping in the club's new billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), her unreliable plastic-surgeon husband, and the seething resentments of both the haves and the have-nots. I met Lee earlier this month, at his new office in Hollywood. The space was sparsely decorated, but he'd already mounted posters for "Beef"; "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," the show that gave him his start in the industry; and "Thunderbolts," a 2025 Marvel movie directed by his creative partner, Jake Schreier. Lee, who has gone by Sonny since childhood and was credited as Sonny Lee for the first half of his career, opened up about the long road to "Beef"--a journey toward more intentional storytelling, as well as feeling "O.K. in my own skin." Perhaps surprisingly, the "Beef" character he seemed to relate to most was Josh, a congenial go-getter who mires himself in workaholism to avoid addressing his grief, as Lee did when one of his dogs died suddenly during production. We talked about his method of tailoring dialogue to his actors, the differences between Korean and American billionaires, and why class and capitalism are such inescapable themes on TV today.