"Young Mazino": The straight guy in "Beef" and "The End of Us," with nine queer hints, some n*de photos, and Missoula, Montana

You have probably seen Young Mazino as Paul Cho, the intensely girl-crazy younger brother of focus character Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) in the road rage-escalation drama Beef (2023). 

Or as Jesse, one of the leaders of the community of Jackson, Wyoming in the zombie Apocalypse The Last of Us (2024-5), whose ex-girlfriend starts dating focus character Ellie.

Two intensely heterosexual characters, but at least they gave us some n*de photos. And maybe there's some gay potential in his other work or his biography.

Young is a first generation Korean-American, born in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1991.  

His family is very conservative. Dad works as a computer engineer, but has a Ph.D. in Theology, and promoted the hegemonic masculinity "boys don't cry," "be tough" stuff.  He disapproved of Young's artistic interest and  pushed him into martial arts, where he received a black belt in Taekwondo.

Queer hint #1: Dad doesn't think he's masculine enough.

His mother offered quiet, behind-the-scenes support, but otherwise his interest in the arts resulted in hostility, rejection, and hatred. 

Queer hint #2: The artistic, musical outcast kid is usually gay

 He was active in the church (he doesn't say which, but there are eight Korean churches near Silver Spring, including Presbyterian, Wesleyan, and Baptist).  At age 17, he visited Korea as part of a church-based symphony. He played the violin.

After watching Daniel Dae Kim on Lost and Steven Yeun on The Walking Dead, he dreamed of becoming an actor, but the parents, community, and church disapproved. So he tried the heterosexist trajectory, college-business major-money-making job, and enrolled at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Queer Hint #3: That same trajectory was pushed at me, but it was "job-house-wife-kids." 

Young wanted to be true to himself, so in 2014 he dropped out of college and moved to New York. While studying at the Stella Adler School of Acting, he worked in corporate finance: Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, a French company specializing in luxury goods.  How did he get such a prestigious job with no college degree?

Queer Hint #4: He was working in beauty products

He also did some modeling and appeared in some short films, mostly playing guys who get girls. 

In 2018, the grind of corporate job, acting classes, and auditions became too much, so Young dropped it all and moved to California.

Queer hint #5: This is the standard trajectory for the Great Gay Migration.       

More after the break