“Beef ”creator, stars preview season 2’s ‘brutal’ rollercoaster ride, break down real fight that inspired revenge epic

You thought you knew Beef when you saw season 1. But season 2 gives new meaning to the word.

For creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin, the dramatic follow-up to the epic clash between season 1 stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong began taking shape while the feathers were still flying.

“We were going through the awards process of season 1, we still hadn’t gotten a season 2 pickup, and I was starting to sweat,” he tells Entertainment Weekly ahead of the premiere of the now-anthology’s second season, which stars Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny.

“I was pitching ideas wildly, nonstop,” he says, when a close contact at Netflix “wisely pulled me aside and was like, ‘Look, I can tell you’re just pitching to pitch.'” The first season ended on a final note, and became wildly popular upon its 2023 release, attaining the coveted top spot on the streaming viewership rankings and winning eight Emmys. Lee could make any kind of show he wanted, he was told. And then “a real-life incident smacked me in the face.”

The Beef-verse expands on multiple fronts in season 2. From a darkly comic road rage incident to something more ambiguous, and potentially more dangerous; from the open roads of Southern California to an exclusive country club in Montecito; and from a couple of strangers in conflict to two actual couples in conflict with each other — and themselves.

Isaac and Mulligan play Josh Martin and Lindsay Crane-Martin, the overburdened manager of the Monte Vista Port Country Club and his emotionally unfulfilled wife. They present the perfect picture to the world, while each suffering in their own private hell. Spaeny and Melton, meanwhile, play Ashley Miller and Austin Davis, a young couple roughing it in a shoebox apartment over-the-moon in love with one another. Ashley and Austin’s dead-end jobs at Monte Vista Port put them on a collision course with the married couple so much further along in their relationship that what they call “love” is entirely unrecognizable to the young sweethearts.

Josh and Lindsay’s beef, the beef that kicks off season 2’s unpredictable cycle of revenge, was born in Lee’s mind after overhearing a “heated debate in my neighborhood coming from a couple’s home. That idea of juxtaposing younger love versus older love felt really interesting to me,” he says.

Overhearing a fight in real life was one thing. Talking about it with friends and family was what really sold Lee on the urgent need for a second season of Beef.

“When the real-life incident happened where I overheard that altercation in the neighborhood, when I was retelling that story to people,” Lee found that his “younger peers were like, ‘Oh my God, did you call the police? Is everything okay?’ Whereas my-age -and-older peers were kind of like, ‘I mean, who amongst us hasn’t?'”

Lee explains, “That dichotomy was the north star.”

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Isaac was instantly able to engage the idea. He speaks with dreamy fascination of the elusive moment when a couple becomes able to “finally see each other as just these human beings, and having love for each other outside of all the resentments and all the stories, the narratives that they have.”

He and Mulligan describe having the same kind of conversations with Lee that led to their boarding the series.

“I started talking to Sunny about this season,” Isaac recalls, employing the affectionate term used by Lee’s loved ones. “How it was different [from season 1], and what it was exploring with relationships. We had these very long Zoom sessions together. Sunny and I were, it felt like a men’s group of two. Like a therapy session.”

Mulligan knowingly laughs, sharing that she first encountered Lee through his work on season 1, which she found “unbelievably stressful, but also really beautiful and surprising.” As a result, she “didn’t know” where their first collaborator conversation would go, “but I wasn’t expecting it to be 90 minutes.”

Mulligan says she fell in love with Lee’s “sense of abandon” on that long call. “There was a very clear parameter of what the idea was for the show, and there were very strong themes. But it wasn’t completely done. There was room to be part of something creative that felt like you could kind of go all over the map. And I knew that there was going to be real freedom in how to play the character,” she says.

Melton was also a fan of the first season, saying it “reminded me of my favorite films, my favorite Korean films.” But he had a wholly different first meeting with Lee, one he describes as “one of those pinch-me moments.”

It went down at a celebration of Melton’s award-winning performance in Todd Haynes’ May December in 2023. Lee was “blown away like everybody else” by the Riverdale star’s dramatic turn in the age-gap drama. When he saw that Gold House, a non-profit collective dedicated to empowering leaders of Asian and Pacific Islander descent, was hosting a party to celebrate Melton, he contrived to sit next to the honoree and pitch him on the series.

“To have him sitting next to me showing me a picture of myself,” Melton trails off, chuckling. “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.”

Like Beef season 1, season 2 delves into textured intricacies of the Korean American experience, as well as the sometimes uneasy exchange between Korean Americans and Koreans. Season 2’s supporting cast is filled out by the Cannes winner and screen legend Song Kang-Ho, Oscar-winning Minari star Youn Yuh-jung, and Seoyeon Jang, who bring those tense bonds to life.

Of course, Lee goes heavy on revenge, regret, and Oresteian recriminations, but season 2 is also a trenchant exploration of the surprising interplay between love and class.

“I think in 2026, as you embark to write a season about love, if you’re trying to make it true, it’s impossible not to heavily dive into the theme of class,” Lee explains. “There’s not an interaction in modern-day life that isn’t deeply impacted the sort of unhinged capitalism that’s running amok.” Though he thinks “capitalism has worked really, really well,” and “has been pretty solid for us as opposed to communism or socialism,” he pushes his characters “up against this hard wall of capitalism” to get at what makes them tick.

That’s what tipped Isaac off that Beef season 2 isn’t a mere rehashing of its predecessor. “This is a real investigation of something. This is not just showing up to deliver some idea. And it’s very exciting.”

Beef season 2 premieres on Netflix on April 16.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly