by Gill Pringle in LA
If conventional wisdom suggests that every hit show is automatically guaranteed a sequel, then BEEF creator/show runner Lee Sung Jin was in no rush to follow up on his 2023 Netflix hit series, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, snagging eight Emmys, four Critics Choice Awards and two SAG Awards.
The original season began with a seemingly minor road rage incident between two strangers that spirals wildly out of control, consuming their lives in increasingly chaotic and darkly funny ways. In turn, it shone a lens on how anger, frustration, and personal struggles can quietly build until they explode in ways that no one expects.
It was a tough act to follow, and Sung Jin wasn’t even sure if he could repeat lightning in a bottle.
Certainly, he wasn’t going to do another road rage story.
“It wasn’t until the universe slapped me in the face with a real-life incident that the creative energies started flowing. And it was in my neighbourhood. I’ll speak vaguely since I still live in that neighbourhood,” smiles Sung Jin.
“But I overheard a heated debate coming from a couple’s home. And the incident itself wasn’t that interesting, but it was everyone’s reactions to it when I retold the story to my younger Gen Z peers, they were all aghast, clutching their pearls, being like, ‘Did you call 911?’ Like, ‘Is everyone okay?’
“Whereas my Millennial and Gen X peers were like, ‘Eh, big deal’. I thought that juxtaposition was very interesting. And, once we had that, then we started trying to somehow convince this A-list talent to do my little show,” he says indicating BEEF 2’s new cast including Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Cailee Spaeny and Seoyeon Jang.
With a fresh new beef to get into, the series opens with Spaeny and Melton’s Gen-Z couple witnessing an alarming fight between their Millennial boss (Isaac’s Josh) and his wife (Mulligan’s Lindsay) as their marriage begins to unravel.
Newly-engaged, Spaeny and Melton are both lower-level staff at a country club, using the incident to gain favours.
Later on, both couples will vie for the approval of the elitist club’s new billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (returning cast member Youn Yuh-jung), who struggles to manage her own scandal involving her second husband, Doctor Kim (also returning Song Kang-ho).
Even though they spend most of their time on screen fighting, Mulligan and Isaac were both delighted to reunite on this, their third project together.
“We got to work together in three very formative moments in our lives,” says Isaac. “When we first met on Drive, we were these young fresh-eyed people just kind of beginning our careers. And then again in Llewyn Davis, we had met our significant others. We were just getting ready to embark on starting families.
“And we had kept in touch and stayed friends, and, you know, we’re looking and wondering what we could work on together again, whether it was on stage or in a movie,” adds Isaac, who even mentioned Mulligan to Sung Jin whom he refers to as ‘Sonny”.
“We stayed very good friends, and had always said, ‘If there’s a part for you, I’ll put you forward’,” agrees Mulligan.
“And then he came good, I guess, on that. But it’s just so easy to act with Oscar because he’s not acting. He’s very bold in all his choices, but none of it feels forced. It feels very natural. I don’t ever feel like I was like, ‘Oh, we’re acting’.
“And I think because we had a sort of long lead-up, lots of conversations with Sonny, and rehearsals, and when we actually got to shooting it, it felt like doing a play,” says the three-time Oscar nominated actress.
Despite their collective talents, the screen couple found themselves upstaged by a cute Dachshund as Sung Jin heaped praise on their four-legged co-star who plays “Burberry”.
“On our first day of shooting, Oscar and I spent the entire day going, ‘Does Sonny like it? Is this sort of what he meant? This is right, right?’,” recalls Mulligan.
“And he’s not saying anything. ‘Is he laughing? Are we funny? Is this meant to be funny?’ We spent the whole day second-guessing ourselves,” says the actress whose sausage dog co-star – real name Jones – was making his screen debut.
“And when the dog is on set, he’s like, ‘Jonesy’s a good boy. Jonesy’s so good. Jonesy, that was perfect.’ And we were like, ‘What?’” laughs Mulligan.
“Or, ‘Who’s a good actor? Who’s a good actor?’” quips Isaac.
In his defense, the director says, “It’d be so patronising for me to tell the great Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan anything.”
Having both watched the first iteration of BEEF, Mulligan and Isaac both had a strong handle on the themes of generational conflict. “I think what’s just incredible to me, it’s what drew me to it, was the conversations I had with Sonny. We had these very long Zoom conversations. This was kind of our courtship. And right away, there were just hours of talking together and delving into the themes,” says Isaac, 47.
“When it comes to the generational thing … feeling like we were just those kids. We can look back with judgment on them now that we know so much more about life. And yet, they’re totally blind to the way that they are behaving in the moment,” he adds.
“And that’s also part of the joy of watching it, because I think we can all recognise that. We feel like, ‘oh, now we know what’s going on’ because we can look back – but with no sense of what’s coming in the future. And our future selves are gonna look back at our younger selves, be like, ‘Fuck, if they only realised where things were going’. So, there’s a beautiful, compassionate view that happens throughout it too,” says Isaac.
For part-Korean actor Charles Melton, 34, working with Sung Jin provided an opportunity to explore his cultural identity.
“There were many hundreds of hours, I would say, in the collaboration where we were just sharing personal stories and certain experiences,” says the May December star.
“And what Sonny does is, not only his experience, but blends it with yours and then puts it into this brilliance of what BEEF is.
“Sonny is so specific and, throughout the collaboration, there’s so much texture and nuance that I think just innately kind of came to life. And, for me, working with Cailee, Carey and Oscar, I never really had to do anything other than just prepare the best I could, learn my lines and just be surprised constantly. And it was a gift,” he says.
For Mulligan, it was a juicy chance to explore someone quite despicable in many ways. “She’s someone who has critically bad low self-esteem, self-worth, doesn’t enormously care about anything, know anything, and she’s got by a lot in her life by just being either in the right circle of friends, dating the right popular person and that’s kind of fallen away. And really, what she has, is a fairly difficult marriage, no career and no friends,” says the actress, laughing at her own blistering appraisal of the woman.
“I think she feels entirely powerless until she’s in a real bind, at which point she gets quite good at being manipulative. But the world that she’s living in is very small, and Josh’s is too. They’re really petty people,” she adds.
BEEF 2 streams from 16 April 2026
