David Choe, who stars in the viral Netflix and A24 show Beef, is facing backlash online after Twitter users resurfaced a podcast from 2014 in which he appeared to explicitly describe the sexual assault of a massage therapist.
Choi denied the protest and issued a statement in 2014, stating he was “not a rapist” and that his comments were simply “bad storytelling.”
Beef, which was released last Thursday, caught the public’s attention and has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But many called for the casting of graffiti artist Choi, who described himself as a “successful rapist” in the 2014 podcast he shared with Asa Akira, DVDASA.
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Investigative journalist Ora Bogado has brought the clip back into the spotlight after she shared the now-deleted interview clip with author Melissa Stetten on Thursday. Bogado tweeted the video and said:
“According to his own telling, the woman David Choe assaulted is Black. He describes himself as ‘a successful rapist.’”
In the conversation between Choi and host Asa Akira, he tells a story about how he was massaged by a woman named Rose, masturbated in front of her and forced her to perform oral sex on him until he ejaculated.
“You’re basically telling us that you’re a rapist right now, and the only way to get your dick hard is rape,” Akira says in the episode. “Yeah,” Choe responds.