©Courtesy of Netflix
Get ready to air your grievances: Beef Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix. As you prepare for the full vengeance-filled course, get a taste of the Emmy-winning show’s return by watching the trailer now.
So who has the beef this season of the anthology series, from creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin and A24? Newly engaged Ashley Miller (Caille Spaeny) and Austin Davis ( Charles Melton) are set against their boss, Joshua Martín (Oscar Isaac), and his spouse, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan). A single encounter triggers chess moves and manipulations that ripple far beyond the country club where they work.
Lee knows fans are used to seeing older people battling with much younger generations. So he decided to switch up expectations with a Gen Z couple and their millennial counterparts. “We thought, ‘What if we actually made them a little bit closer in age and highlight that generational divide?’ ” he says.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Exclusive Interview with Writer/Director/Creator Lee Sung Jin
Q : I heard that you made the music video of RM from BTS, which inspired you to make the second season of “Beef” show, so could you talk about how did you ended make RM music video and how that lead to make the second season of “Beef” show?
Lee Sung Jin: The music video came about because I got a DM over Instagram from him and his team, and they were fans of season one and they just asked if I could do a music video in the spirit of “Beef”. I’m a huge fan of BTS and RM and he had sent me come back to me one of the lead singles from his solo album. I was blown away by it.
The new direction he was taking and, obviously I jumped at that chance. I went over to Korea, shot that music video. I had a great time. I knew that I wanted to come back and shoot something there, and I’m very fortunate that we were able to do that with “Beef” season two.
Q : When you wrote the first season that you talked about everything to Steven Yeun and Ali Wong to create the characters, how was this season? Was it different approach or same process with those actors?
Lee Sung Jin: Season one, Steven, Ali and I got very close and we had so many honest conversations and just digging in into the depths of our psyche together. season two was no different. It was a new cast Oscar, Carey Cailee, Charles, Song- Kang andYoun, they all gave so much to the show.
Even though we didn’t know each other prior, from minute one they were being so transparent our initial zooms were like four hours long, it was very instrumental in creating these characters and making them feel bespoke to each actor.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Q : In this season, two couples played by Oscar Issac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton, once they agreed on contract and conditions, they have common enemy which their boss and they are not fight like first season, which is more passive aggressive way. Could you talk about choose that structure? I thought that was engaging?
Lee Sung Jin: Yeah, absolutely. I think, as a creative you never wanna repeat yourself. Or at least I don’t. I compare it to musicians and bands when a debut album and sophomore album feel too similar, I lose interest. I’m always looking for different shapes, different angles, when you have a season, first season where it starts really overt the domino effect of that from a storytelling perspective, the shapes are similar.
Whereas if you start in a more passive aggressive beef, which is almost the inverse of season one, then there’s some new dominoes that can fall from that beginning. It was very exciting and refreshing to try something different. I hope to always keep pushing things and, zigging when people expect me to zag.
Q : What’s engaging about this series is that how you set this series in country club, where its microcosm of where we are in American Society, members, boss and workers, how did you decide to come to that?
Lee Sung Jin: Honestly, it was just ’cause, I write what I know mostly. I had been house sitting for a friend who was a member of a country club. I’d never really been exposed to country clubs I found it a very fascinating place ’cause most of the members are Silent Gen(silent Generation) and Boomer(Baby Boomers), whereas the employees are Millennials and Gen Z(Generation Z).
No matter how hard those employees work, they’re never really gonna get to be members. I thought that was a really interesting microcosm of society. I feel like a lot of people feel like that these days. So it felt like a good metaphor for the stage of capitalism that we’re in.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Q : Speaking of country club, how did you get to land on that location? How did you get the permission to shoot and what were the advantage that you took from country club that applied into this series?
Lee Sung Jin: I think, it set the country club, set Montecito. We shot exteriors at Montecito Club(In Santa Barbara). But then we cheated the locations to feel like Montecito, where we shot at Spanish Hills Club in Camarillo. We built a lot of the interiors on stage and, season one we explored a lot of Los Angeles Valley area and we wanted to explore a different slice of California.
And Montecito is such an interesting place ’cause it’s the top 0.01% of LA end up always moving to Montecito. And so it’s an even more niche, narrow ultrarich environment that felt like a place where the stakes could be raised.
Q : When I argue with someone, I always try to hear their perspectives, after you made this two seasons of “Beef”, when you get into the situation having a beef with someone, how do you approach differently? Is it different from before you made those series?
Lee Sung Jin: No. “Beef” is really like a work of fiction a reaction to things I’m observing in my real life. Ali Wong, season one talked a lot about her standup and her process and, even though she talks about some real people in her standup, it’s never like a one-to-one.
She always calls an abstraction of truth rather than the truth itself. So I think for me too. “Beef” is just an extraction of the truth in my life and its surroundings versus anything that’s like actually really affecting and changing me.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Q : Almost two decades ago, I heard that you created a blog called, “Silly Pipe Dreams”, which was specific about the music placement in TV shows, every Monday, you named “Music Monday” which you found the songs that used on TV shows and create MP3 links to that. I thought that was interesting background of your knowledge of music. In the first season, you picked Smashing Pumpkin’s song, “Mayonnaise” and Hoobastank’s song, “The Reason”. How did you choose the music this season? Did you also talk to a music supervisor?
Lee Sung Jin: Season 1. I think the spirit of season one was very 90s. It was inspired by 90s grunge and alternative music. It felt like the characters spiritually were stuck in that era.
They were almost like their adolescent selves. a season about overt road rage felt very appropriate for late nineties music. Whereas this season it felt maybe one step. Further down the timeline where it should feel like late aughts, early 2010s, where, that’s probably when Josh and Lindsay first fell in love and they thought that life was gonna be this kind of eternal dance party, and so we had a lot of fun, Jen Malone(Music Supervisor) and I putting together a playlist of all our favorite songs from that era. we had hundreds and hundreds of songs in there, and I listened to it a lot while I was writing and then, a lot of the songs, I would just end up picking as I write.
And they’re put into the outline stage sometimes, and a lot of times on shows you do that and you never expect to get your top choice But I find that with Jen, it’s almost like a done deal as soon as you put it into your outline, because she’s had so much pull and so good at clearing things.
And her taste is amazing that people respect her so much that we were able to get all of our top choices, which is, such a relief. And I’m very happy and proud of the sonic evolution of this season.
Q : They told me to wrap it up. I had a good time talking to you, Lee. Thank you for making the time with me.
Lee Sung Jin: Thank you appreciate it.
©Courtesy of Netflix
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