Why ‘Beef’ Season 2 Star Charles Melton Keeps Betting on Bold Filmmakers

“May December” breakout Charles Melton‘s career took off auspiciously with his quiet role in Todd Haynes’ elusive psychosexual thriller, followed by an intense performance as a Navy SEAL under fire in Alex Garland’s “Warfare.” And now, the 35-year-old actor, who seems to be catnip for irreverent creatives, is poised to conquer the television world — showing off his comedic chops and shredded muscles in Season 2 of Lee Sung Jin’s dark dramedy series “Beef.” 

When the part of Season 2’s Austin came his way, Melton jumped at the chance to play one of the series’ beefing leads. But it wasn’t just that the Korean-American actor and former military brat needed a change of pace after Garland’s immersive shoot, which even involved a boot camp. Melton, who said he is drawn to projects that strike a balance between the serious and absurd, was eager to work with Lee, whom he sees as a successor to his favorite filmmakers, the great Korean auteurs. 

“When I think about my favorite filmmakers, and my favorite genre of cinema, I think of Korean cinema. I think of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, who are mentors to Lee Sung Jin,” Melton said of the “Beef” creator, who goes by Sonny among friends. “Their films — ‘Memories of Murder,’ ‘Parasite,’ ‘Old Boy,’ ‘Handmaiden,’ ‘Mother’ — are these very dramatic, heavy stories that find humor in the reality of the circumstances.” 

Drawing a comparison between “Beef” and the Korean masterpieces that showcase people pushed to the brink by society, capitalism, or evil plots, Melton added, “Within our show, the medium is translucent,” as well. “It’s dramatic and emotionally intrinsic, but also the context, the absurdity of the situation, is funny,” he said.

‘Beef’Courtesy of Netflix

The new eight-episode season of “Beef” — which also stars Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny, and Seoyeon Jang as the central cast — is a “spiritual successor,” as Lee says in the press notes, to the show’s stress-inducing first chapter. Though the titular beef is among coworkers at a Southern California country club, rather than strangers who take a road-rage incident too far, resulting in a much more passive-aggressive style of confrontation and rivalries that feel a bit more reasonable, at least at the start.  

Like in Season 1, the catalyzing event in Season 2 was inspired by a real-life confrontation: a loud domestic dispute the showrunner overheard in his neighborhood. It starts off with Gen Z couple Austin and Ashley (Melton and Spaeney) advantageously overhearing a fight between their millennial manager and his wife (Issac and Mulligan) after a fundraiser at the club where they all work. While the setup isn’t exactly hysterical, Lee manages to elicit plenty of laughs from his characters’ attempts to outsmart each other, which become more desperate in the wake of a Korean billionaire (legendary “Minari” Oscar-winner Yuh-jung Youn) buying the club. Much like, Melton said, how his favorite directors extract humor from human behavior in their films. 

“I think about Austin and the scene where he’s trying to save this bee. As an audience member, watching it, I laugh. But what it was like for me to film it… It was not funny,” Melton said, relating the experience to a conversation he had with Lee Byung-hun, who told him at a Q&A for “No Other Choice,” “I’m not a comedic actor. I wasn’t playing comedy. I just believed in the circumstances.”

“I’m thinking, ‘Austin wants to be of service, and he feels useless. He can’t even save a bee,’” he said, describing a foreshadowing moment in Episode 1 when Austin — a former football star struggling to find purpose — inadvertently drowns a bee he sees struggling on the floor. “He has this emotional kind of crack and wreckage. But we, as an audience, laugh at that. It’s not slapstick humor. You’re not playing humor. It just finds its own life in the material and the way it’s shot and the way it’s written.” 

‘Beef’©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

There’s clearly a synchronicity between Melton and Lee, who is the first Korean American director that the actor has worked with. In many ways, Austin is another version of Joe in “May December,” with both roles capitalizing on the actor’s classic good looks and talent for playing sensitive types. But the character also employs Melton’s Korean American background in ways that are both funny and quite serious — from slow-burning one-liners aimed at his fiancée to an arc centered on disillusionment with the American dream — bringing out a side of the actor we haven’t seen fully realized yet.   

But beyond their shared background, Melton and Lee — whose goal each season is to keep viewers guessing until the climactic end that ties all its storylines together — are aligned on when and how identity should fit into a piece of art.

“There’s so many themes in ‘Beef,’ which Sonny is touching on organically under the umbrella of society and capitalism. And that’s what I love about Austin,” Melton said, referring to the various forces, including the arrival of the Koreans, acting on the character throughout the season. “Austin is navigating the disintegration of his honeymoon phase, while realizing the conviction he has in his identity is a mask that he’s used to assimilate, and being confronted with so many Koreans, it’s doing something to his epigenetics.”

“What I love about the singularity of his [Lee’s] work — him as a filmmaker, as a creator — is he doesn’t limit his art to one specific thing, even though he is so specific,” said Melton, who pointed out that, whether or not identity is the subject matter, being Korean American is always an inherent part of his work. 

“Beef” is now streaming on Netflix.