The Emmy-winning Netflix anthology series Beef returned for a second season on April 16 with an all-new cast. While the inaugural season centered on an explosive feud stemming from road rage, season 2 leans more into simmering tension.
It follows an unraveling couple (Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan) at an elite country club, whose volatile relationship is exposed after two young staffers (Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny) witness a disturbing confrontation, setting off a chain reaction of manipulation, power plays and escalating fallout. The story also taps into the generational divides of Gen X versus Gen Z. Youn Yuh-jung costars as the club’s billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park, bringing boomer presence into the mix.
Key Insights
- The series blends actors’ real-life experiences into the script, creating more specific and authentic characters.
- Extensive collaboration and rehearsal allow actors to take bold risks while staying grounded in truth.
- Detailed character backstories, from finances to upbringing, shape performance choices in subtle but powerful ways.
Creator Lee Sung Jin, also known as Sonny Lee, drew from several real-life experiences when shaping the season. Speaking at a press conference attended by Casting Networks, he recalled overhearing a heated argument between a couple in his neighborhood. When he shared the story with friends, he noticed a generational split in how it was perceived. His Gen X peers brushed it off, while his Gen Z friends were alarmed, asking whether he had called 911.
Another key influence came from house sitting for a friend in Montecito, who had recently sold his tech company for millions of dollars. Lee was given access to the friend’s country club membership, something he initially pooh-poohed. “Then you use it for a week, and you’re like, it’s kind of nice!” he said.
Spending time there, he noticed a clear divide: most of the members were boomers and Gen X, while the staff skewed millennial and Gen Z.
“I found that to be a great microcosm for society,” he said. “No matter how hard those employees work, they’re never going to become members.” He pointed to a line from the show where Melton’s Gen Z character Austin observes, “Everyone grabbed the bag before we could,” a sentiment that reflects growing frustration among younger generations navigating a system that feels increasingly out of reach in today’s world.
“Once we had that metaphor, we kind of ran with it,” said Lee. “I think you can’t write anything true in 2026 without tackling the variable of class. It’s something that permeates every interaction, unfortunately, and it’s not like it’s getting better. If you’re putting your brain into these characters’ minds and trying to wonder what they do, I think money is a huge factor.”
Isaac and Mulligan spoke about playing Josh and Lindsay, the husband and wife whose argument is caught on a cellphone by the younger couple and then used against them to climb their career ladders. The duo previously worked together on 2011’s Drive and 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis, with Beef marking their third collaboration. Isaac said they’ve also experienced their own generational shifts across those projects.
“We were like Cailee and Charles when we met on [the set of] Drive — young, fresh-eyed people just beginning our careers,” he observed. “On Llewyn Davis, we had met our significant others and were getting ready to embark on starting families.”
Now A-list actors and parents, the duo bring that lived experience into their roles. “Being able to bring in that history, that shared past, that lived experience, and to have so much trust already, I knew that it would be an opportunity for us to be able to be bold together and know that we had each other’s backs,” Isaac said.
That perspective, according to Isaac, also extends to the show’s generational themes. “We can look back with judgment on them now that we know so much more about life … and yet [the characters are] totally blind to the way that they are behaving in the moment.”
Isaac said he worked closely with Lee and Mulligan on the explosive argument sequence, describing it as highly collaborative.
“We spent so much time calibrating that and getting the tone just right, knowing that we needed to end in this tableau,” he explained. “Trying to figure out every version that made the most organic sense to get to that place was an incredible puzzle to solve together.”
Mulligan added, “It’s so easy to act with Oscar because … he’s very bold in all his choices, but none of it feels forced. Because we had a long lead-up — lots of conversations with Sonny, we had rehearsals — and when we actually got to shooting it, it felt like doing a play. That meant that we could try things. There was a sense of real ease to it.”
Both Isaac and Melton praised Lee’s willingness not just to draw on his own experiences, but to incorporate those of the actors as well.
“What drew me was the conversations I had with Sonny,” said Isaac. “We had these very long Zoom conversations. There were hours of talking together … mostly about our lives.”
He added that Lee created detailed backstories for the characters, including where they were born, where they went to school, and how much money they made early on. At the same time, as conversations evolved, there was room for evolution to add new information, which would shift and change the character.
“Josh wasn’t written as a Latino character,” he said of his role. “Lindsay [Mulligan] wasn’t written English [i.e., British]. We found our way into that.”
Melton echoed that collaborative process. “There were many hundreds of hours in the collaboration where we were just sharing personal stories and certain experiences.”
He shared with the showrunner that even though he is Korean American, he was often mistaken for Mexican growing up. That detail made its way into episode 3, in a restaurant scene where his character Austin says, “Everyone thought I was Mexican.”
“What Sonny does is not only put in his own experience, but blends it with yours and then puts it into this brilliance of what Beef is.”
