Emmy-winning Beef creator Lee Sung Jin was ready to walk away from his breakout hit after its acclaimed first season — but then he overheard a heated shouting match between a couple in his neighborhood, and suddenly had the inspiration for Season 2.
“It wasn’t that fascinating on its own. But when I retold it, I noticed a divide — my Gen Z friends were horrified, asking if I’d called 911,” says Lee, 44. “People my age just shrugged. They were like, ‘Who amongst us hasn’t done that?’”
The generational disconnect became the foundation for Season 2, which tracks two couples at different stages of their lives and relationships, each navigating love, resentment and financial struggles.
Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan play a bickering couple in a sexless marriage, while Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny are a younger duo with aspirations.
“One of the main themes is marriage versus time,” Lee adds. “A naive, optimistic perspective versus a more seasoned, exhausted one. Ideals matter when you’re young. But as you age, life gets more complicated. It gets gray.”
Capitalism is the other axis of the season. The story unfolds inside a rarefied country club inspired by Lee’s visit to Santa Barbara’s Montecito Club — a place where extreme wealth dictates belonging.
“A friend, who I’ve known since we were broke, came into a lot of money and joined,” Lee says. “The fees are insane, like $300,000. I judged him. Then I spent five days there and thought, ‘Let me see that application.’”
The experience crystallized how people adapt to privilege, yet how impenetrable that world remains to the majority.
“What struck me was that all the members were older,” he says. “And the employees were younger, working incredibly hard, but never going to cross that social barrier.”
For Lee, it became a microcosm of a broader anxiety. “So many younger people feel like the American Dream is dead. Home ownership is down, birth rates are down. The life that used to feel attainable now feels completely out of reach.”
Love and Money: Lee Sung Jin on Beef Season 2
Soon, Lee assembled what he calls a “bucket list” ensemble cast.
Isaac – in a surprisingly magnetic mullet — brought an intensity that reshaped the script. “Our first Zoom was four and a half hours,” Lee says. “We got deep fast and barely talked about the show. It was like a therapy session.”
Meanwhile, Mulligan emerges as a comedic force. “The first thing she told me was, ‘I’m not playing someone who’s dying,’” Lee laughed, noting her regular weighty roles. “She wanted to be funny, and she is. There’s almost Peter Sellers-level physical comedy in there.”
As the darkly sardonic season heats up, the beef gets raw with a wild ride to Seoul, exploring Lee’s Korean roots. The show’s villain is Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), a Korean billionaire who owns the country club and goes to extremes to cover up a scandal created by her cosmetic surgeon husband, Kim (Song Kang-ho).
The chairwoman coldly encapsulates Lee’s central message that the rich dehumanize those who don’t belong in their elite enclave, and how love can be self-serving in a capitalist setting.
“This is why capitalism works,” Lee says. “It is a system of nature, a system of the self. Love lives in this system. All relationships exist in this system.”
Beef is now streaming on Netflix.
Main image: Beef creator/showrunner/director/executive producer Lee Sung Jin. Photo credit: Andrew Cooper/Netflix © 2023
