Netflix’s Beef: Everything You Need to Know About Jordan’s House

The feud at the center of Netflix’s new dark comedy Beef finally erupts at the palatial estate of Jordan Forster, the blunt billionaire boss of Ali Wong’s lead character Amy Lau. The 10-episode series, which dropped on Thursday, details an escalating conflict between Amy and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) stemming from a road rage incident. At the mansion, the titular beef gets bloody to the point of being downright deadly, but its backdrop is the epitome of elegance: Jordan (played by the pitch perfect Maria Bello) lives in a resort-like abode so mind-bogglingly opulent that Amy tours through it alone at one point playing dress up in the myriad artifacts Jordan has collected as décor. For a character so wealthy she’s basically operating on a separate plane of existence from the rest of the cast, it makes sense that the mogul’s home is reminiscent of a museum. In real life, the architectural marvel is actually a place of scholarly work. 

The House of the Book sits atop a hill on the 2,700-acre Brandeis-Bardin campus of American Jewish University in Brandeis, California. Designed in 1973 by architect Sidney Eisenshtat, the Brutalist-style concrete structure is the largest building on the university’s campus. Stained glass windows by Jerry Novorr, one of the school’s alumni, line the corridors and adjoining rooms. 

Its futuristic cylindrical architecture has made the space a favorite film location for sci-fi productions, like Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. On a typical non-shoot day, the building hosts lectures, book talks, galas, and special events on campus. It also contains a library and an open venue space that served as the Power Rangers’ HQ in the early 90s hit television series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Location manager Michael Percival knew Jordan’s mansion would have to embody an intimidating grandeur fitting for the character’s lofty status. While out scouting for a different location in the Simi Valley area, Percival decided to visit the nearby House of the Book and was immediately sold by its dramatic look: “Once we walked into it, it was just sort of instant,” he told Netflix’s Tudum. “[It] offers so many unique looks to it, and the structure, with its round rooms and the very high ceilings and curves, added a lot of [drama] just by the architecture.”

As for all her museum piece set décor, Jordan’s house was staged to upstage: the team wanted to craft a space that felt somewhat close to Amy’s world, but better in all imaginable ways. Production designer Grace Yun, aiming to capture Jordan’s tendency to appropriate in order to grow her empire, arranged a room full of headdresses—if it can be called a “room,” given the size of the space makes it more of an indoor pavilion. Yun and Beef creator Lee Sung Jin hoped to reflect in her home that affinity to subsume others as a means to serve herself. The room full of priceless cultural artifacts was meant in part to illustrate that “aspect of appropriation even in what she does to [Amy’s company] Kōyōhaus and the way she rebrands it,” Yun says. “She wants to own and conquer.”