Steven Yeun.Photo:FOX
FOX
Steven Yeuntakes the cake with hisBeefwin at the 2023Emmy Awards.
The star, 40, won outstanding actor in a limited series or movie for the Netflix show on Monday.
Also nominated in the category wereDaniel RadcliffefromWEIRD: The ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Story,Evan PetersofMonster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,Welcome to Chippendales’Kumail Nanjiani,George & Tammy’sMichael Shannon, andTaron EgertonfromBlack Bird.
“Thank you for this immense honor and blessing,” said Yeun in his acceptance speech. “Man, I have a lot of people to thank. A lot of people that looked out for me on my way to even get to be in this business.”
“There were days when it was difficult to live in Danny’s skin. Sometimes I wanted to judge him; sometimes I wanted to make fun of him,” Yeun said, thoughBeef’s on-set photographer Andrew Cooper told him one day, “Never bail on Danny.”
“I wanna thank Danny for teaching me that judgment and shame is a lonely place, but compassion and grace is where we can all meet,” theWalking Deadalum added.
InBeef, Yeun played Danny Cho, a man whose repressed anger was unleashed after he found himself in a road rage incident withAli Wong’s Amy Lau. In the event’s aftermath, the former strangers' lives became intertwined in unexpected ways, laying the groundwork for a complex cultural examination.
“Beef”.Andrew Cooper/Netflix
Andrew Cooper/Netflix
“There’s a lot going on,” Yeun told PEOPLE last April of his creative process before and during production on the Netflix series. “I think we start somewhere and then we dig so much deeper, and that’s something I’m always looking for.”
At the time, theNopestar toldNPRthat the role had him looking back on his youth.
“Playing Danny was, at times, asking me to revisit a part of myself that when I was younger, I didn’t have a full handle over,” Yeun explained.
“With Danny, it wasn’t that it was cathartic, per se. I got tired being that angry for so long. Every day, you know, I’d show up on set and I’d just be like, ‘Danny’s doing what today?’ And I’m just like,How do I justify this? How do I not hate Danny? How do I love Danny? How do I never bail on Danny?Because Danny is a side of all of us. And how do I never bail so that the audience will never bail?”
Daniel Radcliffe in ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’.The Roku Channel/YouTube
Fellow nominee Radcliffe, 32, starred as"Weird Al" Yankovicin the zany Roku Channel biopic. During an appearance onThe Viewin March 2022, the English actor revealed that while he wore a wig to duplicate the accordion-playing singer’s signature curly locks, the mustache was all him.
“Real mustache, fake hair,” Radcliffe toldAna Navarro,Whoopi Goldberg,Sara HainesandSunny Hostin. “Anything to avoid fake facial hair. Grow it if you can.”
Radcliffe went on to open up about the film — which, according to a press release, explored “every facet of Yankovic’s life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like ‘Eat It’ and ‘Like a Surgeon’ to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle.”
“It was honestly an incredible fast shoot, it was, like, 18 days,” Radcliffe said of making the project. “But it was one of the most fun things I have ever done in my life.”
Evan Peters in ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’.Courtesy Of Netflix
Peters channeled his inner demons to portray notoriousserial killerJeffrey DahmerinMonster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The Netflix series followed Dahmer’s many crimes from the perspective of his victims. Just the latest in a series of projects to recount Dahmer’s murders,Ryan Murphy’s series wasfirst announced in March 2021withAmerican Horror Storyalum Peters attached to lead.
“Doing the role, I wanted to give it 120 percent the whole way through, so Ibrought in a lot of darkness and negativity,” he said, according toThe Hollywood Reporter. Theactor banked on keeping his sights set on the series wrapping as he grappled with Dahmer’s life.
To step away from the sinister, Peter revealed he fell back on viewing a specific comedy film: “It was just having that end goal in sight, knowing when we were going to wrap and finally being able to breathe and let it go and say, ‘OK, now it’s time to bring in the joy and the lightness and watch comedies and romances and go back to St. Louis and see my family and friends and yeah, watchStep Brothers.'”
Welcome to Chippendales in ‘Welcome to Chippendales’.Erin Simkin/Hulu
In Hulu’sWelcome to Chippendales, Nanjiani took on the role ofSomen “Steve” Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who founded the all-male stripping empire.
Speaking to PEOPLE in May of that year, Nanjiani delved deeper intoBanerjee’s haunting fate. “People don’t know that the real story of it is really wild,” he said, adding. “Some really surprising stuff happened, and it’s surprising that people don’t really know about it.”
Noting that “there’s a lot of twists and turns” within the series, Nanjiani detailed that “the show itself spans 15 years from the beginning, all through [the Chippendales] hype, to sort of when it started being less popular.”
Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain in ‘George & Tammy’.Dana Hawley/Showtime
Shannon took on the role of country legendGeorge Jonesin Showtime’sGeorge & Tammy.
With 30 chart-topping hits between them, Jones andTammy Wynetteearned the title of Mr. and Mrs. Country Music many times over. But theirtumultuous private lifeput an end to their passionate marriage in 1975 after just six years, leaving a string of hits and heartbreak in their wake.
Their complicated love story was explored in the six-part miniseries, and Shannon’s performance alongsideJessica Chastainas Tammy became abittersweet trip down memory lanefor the late couple’s only daughterGeorgette Jones Lennon.
“It’s been a crazy emotional roller coaster,” she told PEOPLE in December 2022. “But it’s therapeutic because you start thinking about things you tucked away a long time ago, whether it be painful or even good memories.”
Egerton took on the role of Jimmy Keene, a convict who attempted to elicit a confession from suspected killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) under the agreement that he’d be free if he succeeded.
In addition to Egerton, Hauser andRay Liotta— who wasnominatedafter his unexpecteddeathat age 67 in May 2022 — also received nods at this year’s Emmys.
Liotta’s daughterKarsenshared her gratitude in astatementto PEOPLE last July: “I am so grateful to the members of the Television Academy for honoring my Dad with this nomination. He was so incredibly proud of his performance inBlack Bird, and it would mean the world to him to be nominated alongside Taron and Paul.”
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source: people.com
