Charles Melton on ‘Beef’
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Key Points
Lee Sung Jin tells EW that a scene from Todd Haynes’ twisty 2023 drama May December convinced him Charles Melton was perfect for Beef season 2.
On the scene in which Melton’s Joe Yoo smokes weed on the roof of his home with his teenage son (Gabriel Chung), Lee says, “I saw that performance, I knew that we had to write to Charles.”
Melton describes Lee pitching him on the series at a dinner celebrating his May December performance as a “pinch-me moment,” and says the series “made me feel like I was coming back home.”
Beef season 2 could have taken any shape after Lee Sung Jin created, wrote, and co-directed season 1 to awards and acclaim. There didn’t even need to be more Beef!
“I was pitching ideas wildly, nonstop,” Lee told Entertainment Weekly ahead of Netflix premiering season 2 on Thursday. Then a close contact at the streamer “wisely pulled me aside and was like, ‘Look, I can tell you’re just pitching to pitch,'” suggesting Lee try pitching an entirely different series.
Then two things happened: he overheard a real fight while on a walk in his neighborhood, and he saw Todd Haynes’ provocative psychological drama May December.
Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller and Charles Melton as Austin Davis on ‘Beef’
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Haynes’ twisty star vehicle pits Natalie Portman’s Elizabeth, an actress, against Julianne Moore’s Gracie, a teacher who scandalously married her former student, whom Elizabeth is preparing to play in a film. Melton costars as that student, Joe, all grown up, but still arrested in a state of ambiguous psychological anguish.
Lee describes being “blown away like everybody else” upon seeing the film, and points to one scene in particular that catalyzed his developing thoughts around Beef season 2. “There’s a scene after [Joe] smokes pot on the roof, that was just, I knew it was exactly what the season needed,” he says.
In the scene, Joe smokes weed for the first time with his teenage son (Gabriel Chung) on the roof of their home. He dissolves into tears that are not easily explained — anticipating the pain of separating from your child? Or mourning the childhood you never really had?
“Todd had it early on in the first few takes, but I kept on asking for more takes and ended up doing 14 or 15 takes,” Melton previously told TODAY.com of the scene. “It’s such a heartbreaking scene for Joe, and I learned that day that my job as the actor is to really tell the character’s story, not so much mine.”
Lee described Melton’s quiet yet complex performance in the film as “such a hard thing to do, because it’s heartbreaking and sad, but then you find yourself laughing kind of throughout. That is a tone that is very similar to Beef… so after I saw that performance, I knew that we had to write to Charles. He was actually the first piece that came together.”
It was still awards season, and Lee found out that Gold House, a nonprofit social club dedicated to uplifting Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) voices, was going to throw a dinner to celebrate Melton’s performance. Knowing the actor was perfect for the role of Austin Davis, the goofy, devoted boyfriend of Cailee Spaeny’s grunt worker Ashley Miller, he wasted no time.
“I emailed the head of Gold House, Bing Chen, and I was like, ‘Hey, can you do the seating so I can sit right next to Charles? I want to pitch him all of season 2. It was the night before and Bing was like, ‘Um, I don’t know, man. These seats are pretty locked in,'” Lee recalls. He jokes that he loves “to imagine that he moved someone really important like Chloe Zhao or Lulu Wang” to free up a seat for him. But he got the seat, and came prepared with “PowerPoints on my phone. I was showing his face Photoshopped into storyboards, and by the second appetizer, he was in.”
Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny on ‘Beef’
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
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Melton laughs affectionately throughout Lee’s story, reassuring him that it was flattering, not creepy. “It’s one of those pinch-me moments,” he says.
“Season 1 of Beef, I related to it on so many different facets personally and just creatively. It reminded me of my favorite films, my favorite Korean films. To get to meet and know Sunny,” Melton says, employing the term used by Lee’s friends and family, “to have him sitting next to me showing me a picture of myself, I was like, ‘Oh, is a character inspired by my hair or something?’ He was like, ‘No, we’re going to write it for you.’ That was just an incredible moment.”
Melton’s big break came on the oddball CW drama Riverdale, which also broke the careers of stars like Lili Reinhart and Camila Mendes. The actor referred to the series as his “academy of acting” in a 2023 interview with EW, but the role of Austin on Beef represented something new.
“It tapped into something, tapped into my Korean-ness in a way that I really, really loved,” he says. “Sunny gave me a voice through season 2 that made me feel like I was coming back home.”
Beef season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.
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