The bizarre story of how ‘Beef’ star David Choe became insanely rich

Even so long after its initial release Netflix’s Beef is still riding high thanks to a sterling performance at the Emmys and Golden Globes. The show delivers a rollercoaster ride of resentment, bad decisions, and broken people ruining not only their lives but those around them.

One of the driving forces in the show is David Choe’s Isaac Cho, cousin to Steven Yeun’s series lead Danny Cho. He’s a sketchy small-time criminal and bully, though has a chaotic charisma to him that makes him a blast to watch.

In the wake of the show’s success some of Choe’s older comments came back to haunt him. In a 2014 podcast that he’d engaged in “rapey behavior” with a masseuse. He claims he was playing a character at the time and that the podcast was fictional, but controversy continues to swirl around him for his statement.

But what you might not know is that aside from being a renowned graffiti artist, musician and actor, Choe is also fabulously rich, and the story of how he got his money is truly bonkers.

The Social Network

In the late 1980s, Choe began establishing himself as a graffiti artist of note in Los Angeles. He eventually went legit as an artist, attending the California College of the Arts and self-publishing a graphic novel, Slow Jams. Along the way, he picked up a fan in Napster founder Sean Parker, who wrote him a letter in 2003 commissioning a painting. This was, as per a 2012 interview with Howard Stern, to be an image combining “uncertainty with eroticism”.

Unfortunately for Choe and Parker, Napster was quickly hit by a wave of lawsuits from the music industry. Parker was unable to pay for the painting, as Choe explained:

“Just one day he’s like, ‘Ah! F**k!’ — this is 2003 — he’s like, ‘F**k, I can’t get the painting.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘My company’s being sued for a trillion dollars right now.’ And I was like, ‘What company is that?’ He goes, ‘It’s Napster.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh s**t! That’s like the company that … you guys do all …’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And he was 23 or 24 at the time, and he goes, ‘You and me, like …’ He’s like, ‘You’re the f**king best artist ever. Like, I love your s**t. I need to get a painting from you one day. Just wait for this bulls**t to blow over and I’ll get one from you next time.’”

Said BS did indeed blow over, and two years later in 2005 Parker was heavily involved in the launch of Facebook. Needing someone to bring some artistic flair to the fledging social network’s small headquarters, he contacted Choe, who was freshly out of prison after an altercation with a police officer in Japan. Parker’s commission was somewhat bizarre, asking Choe to “go crazy and draw as many giant cocks” as he wanted.

Choe delivered, festooning the walls with explicit sexual imagery. A journalist from the defunct Silicon Valley gossip mag Valleywag visited the headquarters in 2005 and reported:

“The cool part was they hired some graffiti artist to paint stuff on the walls. Weird abstract designs, scantily clad busty women on hellhounds, etc. Aggressive, but fun. So then he says, “hey, come here, check this out.” Sean takes us in the women’s restroom, and shows us the wall. The wall has on it a fresh, lifesize, starkly realistic painting of two naked women having sex. It was an amazing painting: one woman standing up, back arched, nude, legs spread; other woman on her knees eating her out.” 

At the time Parker claimed this art was by his girlfriend, though it seems likely that this was a fib and he’s actually describing Choe’s art.

Whatever the case, once Choe finished, Parker made him an offer. He could either be paid $60,000 on the spot, no small amount for a struggling artist just out of prison. Or he could be paid the equivalent amount in Facebook stock. This was a huge gamble, but as Choe explained:

“I believed in Sean. I didn’t care about Facebook… I’m like, this kid knows something and I’m going to bet my money on him.”

Facebook goes public

Seven years later and Facebook had become an online behemoth, defining social media and clocking up billions of users around the world. Facebook was valued at $104 billion and Zuckerberg took the company public with the initial offering raising $16 billion.

Choe’s Facebook shares were suddenly worth a lot of money. How much money? Well, when Facebook went public Choe minted around $200 million for his work painting Facebook’s offices with graphic sexual imagery.

This newfound megawealth clearly unnerved Choe. In a 2012 interview with Barbara Walters, he said:

“You can’t buy your privacy back. Because I was already doing OK, and to have this abstract amount of money now, I cannot buy my privacy back. I was like: What the hell’s happening? Every news– Al Jazeera, every news organization in the world is beating down the door, trying to get a, you know, interview. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.'”

And how did it affect his life? Not as much as you might assume:

“It’s gonna sound horrible for me to say money is meaningless. But everyone’s like: What are you gonna do now, now that you have all this money and freedom? I did everything I wanted to when I had nothing. Everyone’s like: Well, what are you gonna do now? I’m like, I’m still gonna do whatever I want except more people are just gonna bother me now.”

Or, to summarise, “mo money, mo problems”.

The story of how a graffiti artist fresh out of prison ended up this rich is probably worth a Netflix show in its own right. It remains to be seen whether the sexual assault allegations will result in any meaningful consequences for Choe, though being a part of one the best Netflix shows in a very long time likely means his acting career will continue to go places.

Beef is available to stream on Netflix.