A brief but brilliant ceremonial passing of the Beef baton between Season 1 star Ali Wong and Season 2 star Oscar Isaac.
Topics covered include: NPR podcast voice, evangelical upbringings, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin's incredible observations of things that are both really painful and really funny, little mullets, Ali's love of Ex Machina, parallel play, the impressive amount of bodily fluids in Beef seasons 1 and 2, Oscar first meeting Carey Mulligan on set of Drive, getting to play really bad people, going down a YouTube rabbit hole to learn how people respond to psychedelic toad venom, the intricacies of staging a masturbation scene, Ali competing for roles with Stanley Tucci.
Ali Wong: Are we supposed to introduce ourselves? And do we do it to the camera? This one. Hi, I'm Ali Wong.
Oscar Isaac: Hi, I'm Oscar Isaac.
Ali Wong: And this is —
Oscar Isaac: The A24 Podcast. I'm using my podcast voice.
Ali Wong: You sure are. Very NPR of you. Very non-threatening.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, I'm non-threatening.
Ali Wong: Very cozy cardigan. Very—
Oscar Isaac: Mm-hmm, with my little cloud drink.
Ali Wong: Yeah. So Oscar, I don't even know. I just assume that people who are movie stars don't watch TV because it's beneath you. So, I was surprised that you were a fan of Beef and that you watched it. So how did you even come on to Season 1?
Oscar Isaac: Well, everybody was talking about it. I remember watching the first two episodes and just loving it. And then I have children that don't let me watch anything, so then I didn't get to finish it. It was one of those where I was like, "I've got to finish that." And then I'd gotten a call from Sonny about a new season.
Ali Wong: Oh, nice.
Oscar Isaac: And so I was like, "Well, now I got to finish it." And I loved it. And it was so funny because I already liked it from those first two, but then in that third episode it takes such a turn emotionally. When Steven's at the church and the song is playing and he starts crying. And yeah, I was—
Ali Wong: You know what's funny about that? So in that scene where he starts crying, we were all at dinner together, and I was like, "Oh my God, Steven, I just watched that scene." And he was like, "Oh yeah." And I was like, "It's so funny." And he was like, "No, it's not." And I was like, "Yeah, it is, man." I was like, "It's hilarious how you just start ... How you're like that, and you just start crying." And he was like, "I don't—"
Oscar Isaac: And can't stop.
Ali Wong: Yeah. And then he was like, "I didn't think it was ... I really don't see it or whatever." And then I was so uncomfortable, and I went to go to the bathroom at this Korean barbecue place. I was like, "Oh my God, did I offend Steven?" But then, thereafter, a lot of people ... And then he sort of embraced it. But because he was so committed, that's why it worked.
Oscar Isaac: Of course.
Ali Wong: Because he can't judge it and think that that scene is funny.
Oscar Isaac: It reminds me of, I remember when I was doing Inside Llewyn Davis and whenever I would—
Ali Wong: Which I just saw recently.
Oscar Isaac: Oh, yeah? Nice. Well, when I would do—
Ali Wong: So good. So, so good.
Oscar Isaac: Thank you. When I would do a scene, and if I thought of it, I was like, "Oh, this scene's pretty funny." I would do it, and there wouldn't be much of a reaction. But whenever I was most in pain, the Cohens would just be cracking up. And so there's just something about that.
Ali Wong: Yeah, I think that commitment where it is so, you do take it seriously. And the part of you that can connect to taking it seriously is like that's what makes it work.
Oscar Isaac: For sure. I mean, I think it's also like Sonny's tone, right? The fact that that is happening, which is very real, but surrounded by all this hyper-Christian praise music that's happening at the same time. And I grew up in an evangelical Christian world. And so it also, I found it very funny from that standpoint as well, and like the youth groups and the Christian rock and all that. But it is what I loved so much about talking to Sonny about this one, too this Beef, is his incredible observations of things that are both really painful and really funny and like the absurdity and in a way the compassion with how small people can be.
Ali Wong: Yeah. It was so… I mean, Season 2 is so great. You're so great in it. You're so funny. I mean—
Oscar Isaac: That means a lot coming from you.
Ali Wong: You're so, so funny. I mean, everyone knows you're funny from ... I think, what do you think ... I think it's when I watched Ex Machina, that's kind of when I got put on to like, I was like, "Oh, this dude's so, so funny in addition to being a great actor." When you're wearing that fur vest, and you're having the time of your life, and then the joy just drained so quickly. Like you go up and you go down, and then you're like down about being down. There were just like a lot of really ... And you have like a real menace to you too, which is such a fun part of Beef too, because in a way, like you're not really like a gangster, but everyone in Beef gets to be a bad person and it's so fun. So, how much did you ideate with Sonny over your character before?
Oscar Isaac: Well, I'm curious about you too, because I mean for you, the transition too from standup into something like this, like what that was like for you. And I was very curious, going into this, this role in Beef that you had was like so massive and asked so much of you how that transition worked for you and what your conversations with Sonny were like. So I want to hear about that, but I'll answer you about this, it was like a courtship. Remember, I was doing Frankenstein at the same time and we would have these—
Ali Wong: Oh, he’d get so excited when he calls.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, and we'd have two and a half hour conversations that I would cry.
Ali Wong: I know.
Oscar Isaac: We would go really deep. If I read anything from a self-help book recently, I'd be like, "Hey, I just read this." And we would just go down that path together. Incredibly open about his own life, which encouraged me to be open about mine, which was strange with somebody I'd never met other than just on Zoom. And so his sensibility is really what won me over because at that time I think there was maybe one episode and even that episode wasn't quite there yet. There were some ideas, but it was out of those conversations where I thought this, "he's got his beat on something and he's really funny and we connect so much on just the spiritual journey of getting into middle age."
Ali Wong: Yeah. I mean, he really asks ... I mean, you've seen those tie-dye t-shirts with the Ram Dass quotes that he wears. He's a very spiritual person. And so it sort of begs of you to really be vulnerable and open up with him personally in those conversations. And then it's really interesting what he extracts and extrapolates from there to your character. And then it's kind of the best version of co-creating with somebody. But there were times where, like for some of the scenes, I wasn't used to memorizing that amount of dialogue.
Oscar Isaac: Do you memorize your stand-up routines?
Ali Wong: I do, but I write all of it. And so with some of the dialogue, I was like ... I remember there was one day we did like ... Because we had a lot of time constraints and I said to him, I was like, "I can't do this in one take. I know you want to do it in one take, but I just can't do it." And he was like, "I think you can do it." And then he was like, "We got to go." And then that was it. And then I kind of just didn't have a choice to think about it too much. And I'm not the kind of person to go back and forth with him because it exhausts me. So I'm like, "All right—"
Oscar Isaac: Mm-hmm, you try to fight it. Yeah.
Ali Wong: To try to fight it. And I see, I think that's a lot of people's process because it's like in that they understand more, or ... I don't really know. I don't really relate to that. I just am like, "I'll go where you tell me and I'll do whatever you say." And then I just kind of say the words, but we also just didn't have time because—
Oscar Isaac: Right, right, it was the first one—
Ali Wong: So I think that was really a blessing because I just didn't have time to think about it.
Oscar Isaac: Overthink it.
Ali Wong: Was it like that for you—
Oscar Isaac: It's the enemy, is the overthinking.
Ali Wong: ... on your first big project? Where you did a ...
Oscar Isaac: I mean, I was so hungry to get an opportunity coming out of drama school that I think when I got it, I just was like, "This is everything. This is going to be my Dog Day Afternoon."
Ali Wong: And what was that?
Oscar Isaac: This was a movie ... Scott Burns, a good buddy of mine says, he's a great writer and it was the first film that he directed. It was called Pu-239, which is like a plutonium isotope. And I was like playing this Russian gangster trying to sell plutonium on the black market.
Ali Wong: Oh, yeah. And you're like, "This is very important."
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, yeah, this is it.
Ali Wong: This is going to change the world.
Oscar Isaac: It might change the world. Yeah, exactly.
Ali Wong: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Oscar Isaac: So yeah, yeah. And I can be an overthinker and like to talk about things and like to try things and question everything. Like, "It says I come in through the door, but why don't I come in through the window? How come I don't come in through the… Why doesn’t…" So that all the possibilities collapse to the only thing it can be.
Ali Wong: I see.
Oscar Isaac: That's kind of fun for me, you know?
Ali Wong: Yeah, I get it —
Oscar Isaac: And in fact, figuring out what it is usually kind of a bummer because then it means all the other possibilities—
Ali Wong: All that is gone.
Oscar Isaac: ... gone. I like when it might be anything, it could be this, it could be that, it could be this.
Ali Wong: Did you collaborate a lot on your wardrobe? Because I found your wardrobe… so subtle—
Oscar Isaac: Well, it was—
Ali Wong: But that's another thing about Beef, it's very subtly funny, the wardrobe. Like Carey's wardrobe cracked me up, too.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah. Yeah, the wardrobe is—
Ali Wong: She was wearing these coordinated linen suits that had embroidered little dumb things on them and then your wardrobe was like, it was just so coded and still ... Oh, okay. What did it say to you?
Oscar Isaac: Well, Olga's incredible.
Ali Wong: Yeah, she's amazing.
Oscar Isaac: She's astounding and she's so funny and subtle as well. But before that, the first place I started with was the hair. And I worked with somebody named Tim Nolan who was incredible. And the first thing I do is, "Okay, what's his head going to look like? You're going to see a lot of this head. What are we doing?" And we landed on this little mullet.
Ali Wong: Uh-huh, yeah. It's the most—
Oscar Isaac: It's the tiniest rebellion. You know? Of trying to hold onto something.
Ali Wong: To youth. Yeah, to that—
Oscar Isaac: Exactly. To youth, and to like "Hey, man, I know I'm a country club manager—
Ali Wong: A cool guy.
Oscar Isaac: ... but you know man, I'm a cool guy."
Ali Wong: That was really riding that line, it followed through with the whole wardrobe.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, exactly. So that was really important. And since sometimes we would take our cues off of Sonny of what he was wearing and the Crocs and the oversized sweaters and playing with that idea and also what the suits looked like. And we wanted the suit to look like it's something that he wants to look good in, but he doesn't want to look like an agent or something and he wears the Oura ring as well and all these little things that kind of create—
Ali Wong: He's really trying to still have it all.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a great thing I heard recently, which I feel like kind of encompasses Josh. I heard someone say, "You can have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want." And I think the show is a lot about people trying to have everything they want. You know? And it's just endless grasping, endless grasping.
Ali Wong: Yeah. Just even when he's talking to the ... Who's the guy who's super rich at the club who has the private—
Oscar Isaac: Troy, yeah. Bill Fichtner.
Ali Wong: When he's talking to Troy, and you're still trying to have everything and you're like not even ... I mean, Troy plays it really well, but you're not reading the room. Whereas before your character's so sensitive, you're so desperate that it's like you can't read his… this clear sign that something's off.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. The desperation overtakes all of that, the fear and all that.
Ali Wong: What was it like working with Carey again after all these years? Because I had just ... Bill showed me Inside Llewyn Davis, because I'd never seen it before. And I was like, "This is amazing." And you hadn't worked with her since then, right?
Oscar Isaac: I hadn't worked with her ... We worked together on a movie called Drive.
Ali Wong: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oscar Isaac: Which was way, way... That was the first time I had met her and we were both still in our 20s and ...
Ali Wong: You guys are a couple?
Oscar Isaac: In Drive?
Ali Wong: Yeah. Oh no, you're not.
Oscar Isaac: In Drive, we are.
Ali Wong: Right, but then you die.
Oscar Isaac: Yes.
Ali Wong: So fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oscar Isaac: I'm in prison and then her and Ryan Gosling kind of get together. And so we were like young and Hollywood and just things were starting to open up and it was amazing to meet her at that moment. And then years later, Inside Llewyn Davis, and I had met my significant other, she had met her significant other, Marcus, and we were just newly in love and this big role and about music. And so that was amazing to meet at that point. And then now to come together again.
Ali Wong: Is it true that you also auditioned for that at the very last minute?
Oscar Isaac: For Llewyn Davis?
Ali Wong: Yeah. Like, they had already decided ... A decision had been made.
Oscar Isaac: They hadn't decided yet, but they were—
Ali Wong: Okay, I had heard that a decision had been made.
Oscar Isaac: Well they were getting close, I think.
Ali Wong: And then you came in and they weren't really familiar with you.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, no, I hadn't done a read before.
Ali Wong: And then after you sang and you had auditioned, they were like, "Oh no, we don't have a choice."
Oscar Isaac: Well, they didn't tell me that part.
Ali Wong: That's what I've heard.
Oscar Isaac: That's funny. Yeah. No, I mean, the character was designed on Dave Van Ronk, who was a 6'5", 200-pound Swede. But anyway, yeah, so then we met on that after we have kids and we've lived a lot of life. It was just, I've never worked with anybody better. I talk about, with kids where they talk about parallel play, right?
Ali Wong: Uh-huh, yeah.
Oscar Isaac: It's like kids play next to each other, and then a developmental thing is when they actually start playing with each other and it's like acting with her feels like, "Oh, usually I'm just doing parallel play." Usually, I'm just kind of doing my thing next to somebody doing their thing. Often it can feel that way, but with her it's, I don't know, it's just something else happens and I just think I'm mesmerized by her.
Ali Wong: Yeah. It really feels that way when you guys are together, and I think it's because ... I don't know if it's because also we have this as an audience, have a relationship with you guys as a couple in these different forms, but it kind of already feels like you have—
Oscar Isaac: It informs—
Ali Wong: ... reincarnated many times together as ... I don't know, it was really interesting. And I mean, that's the other thing that's interesting with Sonny, when he does casting, it's all very, very intentional. So I think he takes that into account too, but ...
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. And then when we started working, especially on that first fight scene ...
Ali Wong: You have to be really comfortable with someone to go there.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. And also just to write it together. The three of us wrote that thing together. I mean, he wrote it, but the way that we workshopped it, the way that we would come ... We'd do very long improvisations and some of that—
Ali Wong: Blocking.
Oscar Isaac: ... and that kind of Sidney Lumet style would come into the ... He would incorporate that and write around it. And yeah, that was really exciting to kind of have authorship over it that way. I mean, we're a couple of EPs sitting here, a couple of Beef Eps. That was a really cool feeling to really feel like—
Ali Wong: Yeah, that's the best part about working with him. And then you're like, "Did I?" And then you watch it and you're like, "Oh, he put that in there. We put that in there. Oh my God."
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, for sure. When I would get some of the scripts, I'd be like, "Ooh, that's a direct quote right there. I'm not sure I can ..."
Ali Wong: I know. I know. Okay, there's two things I know Sonny loves. He loves it when people get at somebody with their bodily fluids. He loves that and he had it twice this season.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah.
Ali Wong: But you were an unknowing receiver of that, your character was.
Oscar Isaac: Of the body fluids, yeah.
Ali Wong: Yeah. But he also, there's also—
Oscar Isaac: I give some bodily fluids, too.
Ali Wong: Oh, you do. There's also your masturbation scene. Is that your first masturbation scene?
Oscar Isaac: No, it can't ... It couldn't have been. Surely I've had many more masturbation scenes that I can't think of at the moment, but I mean, it might ...
Ali Wong: I mean, it's ... Okay, so—
Oscar Isaac: How'd I do?
Ali Wong: You did great, but—
Oscar Isaac: Did you believe it?
Ali Wong: I believe it. But that's the thing, again, you have to not think that you're doing a masturbation scene. You have to really commit because it's an embarrassing thing to do in front of people. So you really have to ...
Oscar Isaac: Yeah.
Ali Wong: But I don't know. I mean, for you, was it ... You're like, "Oh, what? I've done it a hundred times. Have I done it once?" So clearly it was not this big—
Oscar Isaac: I've just been around for so long. I'm sure I did it somewhere. I mean, of course, it's so goofy.
Ali Wong: But you have to make it not look goofy. You can't be like, "..." You can't be cartoonish about it. You have to like ...
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, I have to think about—
Ali Wong: And the truth is when most people masturbate, it probably doesn't look good.
Oscar Isaac: No, no. That was a big talk.
Ali Wong: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oscar Isaac: Sonny and I on set talking about, "Well, how should we do this?" And so he's like, "Well, if I was going to do it, I would do it like this." I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. Legs splayed out."
Ali Wong: Uh-huh, laptop in the front.
Oscar Isaac: All right, your laptop in the front, okay. I'm more of like, "I guess the side, kind of on the side," and we would try to set that up. And we'd be like, "What story does that tell?" Yeah, how much self-love is it? There's a lot of elements of that expression, but for us being like, "Okay, well, I guess this is kind of his safe space and it means a lot to him to be able to do this."
Ali Wong: He's in his man cave.
Oscar Isaac: He's in his man cave and it's actually a—
Ali Wong: No one's watching.
Oscar Isaac: He's mindful. It's not just like, "Let me just rub one out while no one's around."
Ali Wong: Yeah, this is the wind-down.
Oscar Isaac: Exactly, it's the wind-down. Right.
Ali Wong: That's what it felt like. It felt very real in that way.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, exactly. And also, I mean, that was something that through our conversations got added in, that wasn't there originally, not only the masturbation, but the OnlyFans. It felt like, "You know what? I think he's got to have something of his own that he's holding, that's a place where he allows himself some freedom."
I mean, that was ultimately the big thing with Josh is I found even playing him, even talking about him, I start to go back into my throat like this because he's such a strangled character. I actually had to do work with somebody to be like, "This thing is strangling me too much. I don't know why that happens." And I think it's just a real testament to his writing, which is that it just is a response that it creates in me when I start thinking about him and his life and how things go. It's just everything gets tight.
Ali Wong: Yeah. I think that's a common thing with all ... That's very relatable, but all the characters in Beef have a way of feeling really trapped by a life that they build for themselves or by ...
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, these constructions, right?
Ali Wong: Yeah.
Oscar Isaac: These constructs of identity and of life and of surroundings and of goals and inevitably everything that is constructed falls apart at some point.
Ali Wong: Yeah. What was it like working with Cailee and Charles?
Oscar Isaac: They were so great. I mean, I've been a huge fan of Cailee's actually for a while. I remember seeing her in Devs, which is Alex Garland, he did this show and she played a little boy, or not little, but like a teenage boy.
Ali Wong: Oh, wow.
Oscar Isaac: And I said, "Who is he?" And it's like, "Actually, it's Cailee Spaeny." And I was like, "This is an incredible, incredible performance." And she's great. I mean, that scene that we get to do at the beverage cart on the golf course was one of the first scenes.
Ali Wong: It was so great.
Oscar Isaac: It was so fun.
Ali Wong: Yeah, because she's not saying anything.
Oscar Isaac: No, no.
Ali Wong: It's just ... Yeah.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, just twitchy and trying to say the right thing.
Ali Wong: I know, and then she just really goes on the journey of being just corrupted.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, you see that. So she was fantastic. And then Charles is such a mensch. He's such a beautiful soul, so funny as well, and he's great. I find that the character that he made just indelible and he's so great. He's pitch perfect in this thing. I really love working with him.
Ali Wong: The speech you give to Charles after you do Bufo. And I love that. I love the Bufo scene so much. And when they do what you're seeing and then they cut to you just on the ground like, "Phwooh" And your hand, it’s like, and you’re on the ground. And the way you’re, again, i mean when you do psychedelics, its not fucking cute.
Oscar Isaac: No.
Ali Wong: With masturbating, people ... And a lot of times, on TV, when they masturbate—
Oscar Isaac: Yeah.
Ali Wong: ... they are feeling their hair and they're going like this. I'm like, no one is doing that. Your fists are clenched. It's a tense experience. And a lot of times with psychedelics, when you're positioned like that and doing that, I'm like, that's exactly ... You look like a squid on the floor—
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, that's what's happening.
Ali Wong: ... that's out of water. That's exactly what I ... I know I look like that in Joshua Tree at that Airbnb. So I was like, "Who made that decision?"
Oscar Isaac: Well, that was thankfully ... I mean, YouTube is an amazing place. So I was like, "There's got to be people on Bufo on YouTube." And so I went down a rabbit hole, and I found somebody making that exact sound going, "Phwooh, phwooh." A bit of bubbling saliva and then read more about it, and it can give seizures and it can give different kinds of reactions. There's lots of different reactions, especially if people start having a freakout. And so there's some videos of—
Ali Wong: But there's a way, that when you're doing that where it's like, there's a way that feels good too, and you're just very free in channeling—
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, like that—
Ali Wong: ... act like a baby.
Oscar Isaac: Exactly. Yeah.
Ali Wong: Whatever you're experiencing where it can be exhilarating. It can be like a big release or whatever. But I was like, that is—
Oscar Isaac: It's an animal release.
Ali Wong: Yeah, exactly.
Oscar Isaac: It's like an animal shivering.
Ali Wong: That's why it was like ... It was like a sea creature. I was like, this is really ... That fluttering. I was like, "Oh, this is very, very real."
Oscar Isaac: Well, the way that you guys did that whole psychedelic scene was so also very beautiful.
Ali Wong: Oh, thanks. Yeah.
Oscar Isaac: And so deep and I mean, it lifts in such an amazing way, that part.
Ali Wong: So that, I don't know if Sonny told you, we didn't know what we were doing, I think until a week before.
Oscar Isaac: Okay. See I'm seeing a pattern here. Seeing a pattern here, Sonny Lee.
Ali Wong: And then all of a sudden we were just in that national park or forest and I was like, "Okay, I guess ..." No time to fight. No time to fight.
Oscar Isaac: That's his trick. I mean, we were in Korea shooting the last episode and we're like, so—
Ali Wong: Oh, yeah, where are you going to go? Who are you going to complain to?
Oscar Isaac: Yeah.
Ali Wong: Nobody. Yeah.
Oscar Isaac: "Going to get those pages because we're here."
Ali Wong: But it's kind of good.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah. At what point in the shoot did you guys shoot that? Was that towards the end?
Ali Wong: That was at the end.
Oscar Isaac: That was at the end.
Ali Wong: Yeah.
Oscar Isaac: So there's some trust at that point too, that you know what's what, so it's not so scary.
Ali Wong: Yeah. Well, at that point too, I had worked with Sonny before.
Oscar Isaac: What did you do?
Ali Wong: He was a writer on this animation show I did with ... Oh, you're a former co-star for ... Was it The Card Counter? Tiffany Haddish and I used to play these best friends who were birds—
Oscar Isaac: Tiffany.
Ali Wong: Tiffany. I have to say, it was very funny. Okay, so I love Tiffany and she's one of my dear friends. That trailer, okay, I laugh so hard when there's the glass between you and there's this shot where ... Do you know what I'm talking about?
Oscar Isaac: Yeah.
Ali Wong: And then her long fingernail—
Oscar Isaac: The nail going ...
Ali Wong: It's like—
Oscar Isaac: And the credits started to go over the finger.
Ali Wong: I was like, "What is this movie? What is this alternate—"
Oscar Isaac: Paul Schrader man, he's a wacky dude.
Ali Wong: Tiffany and Llewyn Davis are together and are in long fingernails shaking this, this was a hilarious combination. So Sonny wrote on that. We've told this story a million times, but he had wanted to do this show about a road rage incident he had with this guy and he wanted Steven in it and he always pictured the opposite character as Stanley Tucci. Did he tell you that?
Oscar Isaac: I think I'd heard that, yeah.
Ali Wong: Oh yeah. And then I randomly had a conversation with Sonny during COVID—
Oscar Isaac: I'm sure it's been your issue your whole career is always Stanley Tucci or you.
Ali Wong: Stanley Tucci or me, I know.
Oscar Isaac: It's just—
Ali Wong: It's like some women are like, "That Jessie Buckley, always." And I'm like, "Oh, Stanley—"
Oscar Isaac: Stanley Tucci.
Ali Wong: I wanted that pasta show." But I wanted to play the killer in The Lovely Bones. Is he the killer in The Lovely Bones?
Oscar Isaac: He was the killer in The Lovely Bones.
Ali Wong: Oh yeah. So then I talked to Sonny one day during COVID and he was like, "This whole time I wanted Stanley Tucci, but now I think it would be a lot more interesting if it was you." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, yes. It's been my dream to work with Steven and you're such a fantastic writer that would be amazing to collaborate with you guys." Yeah, I had never done anything like that before. And then once we started actually getting into it, I was like, "What have I done?" But it was great.
And I mean, it was one of the best experiences of my life of how collaborative it was. And then I don't want to get too woo-woo, but I do feel very ... I mean, those guys and I still remain very close. It really is ... I imagine, and I hope to have the kind of working relationship that you have with Carey for years to come with Steven just because you really don't find that every day.
Oscar Isaac: Yeah, that's true.
Ali Wong: I used to think when people would talk about chemistry, I always thought it was like ... I always thought it was a romantic sexual thing, but it's really not that at all.
Oscar Isaac: No, I think it's more about ease. I remember sometimes doing auditions, I remember I was doing whatever, it was a play and I'd already been cast and I had to read with a lot of people coming in and sometimes I couldn't tell who was better, just sometimes it was way easier to do the scenes and sometimes it was a lot harder and not because they were necessarily worse actors, there was just something that made it easy. That’s rare.
Ali Wong: Okay.
Oscar Isaac: All right.
Ali Wong: Is that it? Yeah?
Ali Wong: All right. Do we want a more nice conclusion? Okay, great.
Oscar Isaac: All right. It'll just fade out on us talking eventually.
Ali Wong: Yeah.