In many ways, BEEF Season 2 is about intergenerational conflicts. It’s just that, in this sophomore season, creator Lee Sung Jing chose a very different background for those than what we saw in Season 1. Elite country clubs are, however, the perfect place for drama.
Oscar Isaac, fresh from a lead role in the Oscar-winning Frankenstein, stars as the manager of the club, Joshua Martín. It is his strained marriage to Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) that serves as the catalyst for all the tension, aka the beef. But when we talked to the cast of the show, they were more focused on the play on words.
Isaac, for one, had some pretty fun memories of very Latine one-liners that pop into his head. “Te va a caer, te va a caer,” he said, and perhaps the best part was his translating everything to Mulligan and how little sense every one of these phrases makes when you translate them literally. “Que tu boca se haga chicharrón,” Isaac also said. And who can forget “Me tienes al punto del chorizo.”
We (and Isaac) will keep using these anyway even if the translations make no sense.
“Beef” in Spanish is meat. And if Latines are known for something is their carne asadas. When questioned about who they would invite to a carne asada, Isaac took a beat and then said, “Jesus,” but not as he would invite Jesus, more like I have no idea. Mulligan, however, though he did mean Jesus. “I think he just ate fish, right? I don’t know, he probably wouldn’t want the carne,” Isaac theorized.
Yes, this was the vibe for the entire thing. But hey, Mulligan said she’d bring co-star Charles Melton, which is a very good sign of the vibes these cast had on set, too.
Isaac went back to Jesus. “Oh, definitely not Jesus. No, I mean, nothing against Jesus,” he said as he thought about the question. “I mean, he’s always there anyway.” But he had a very heartfelt answer, in the end. “My uncle Guillermo, who’s not with us anymore, you know? He was always fun to have at a carne asada.”
For Isaac and Mulligan, working together was easy because they’re friends. “It was an actual dream, because we had dreamt about working together. And you don’t have to act when you’re acting with someone like Oscar’s level, because you just can respond to things.”
She wasn’t the only one who had praise for Isaac. Show creator Lee Sung Jing also had some flowers to throw his way. “Oscar, just identity aside, is, you know, the best actor of his generation,” he said. Big words, but there was no doubt in Sung Jing’s mind. And once he cast Isaac, who was his first choice, then he leaned into his identity.
“I think him having Guatemalan background, half Guatemalan, half Cuban, we started talking about what that kind of upbringing looks like, and his parents, I think his mother had passed. And so kind of having that being a shadow that looms over Josh.” And that, in many ways, makes the journey come full circle.
For BEEF. For Joshua Martín. And perhaps, even a little bit for anyone who needs that reminder. Sung Jing added, “It was nice to be able to see that mother in that, you know, a little drug sequence. And the outpouring of the flowery words that she bestows upon him in that drug sequence, you instantly get a sense of what he, as a character, has been chasing, you know, that motherly love.”
Not the beef we expected.
BEEF Season 2 is now available to stream on Netflix.
Interview was conducted by Brenda Barrientos for Remezla and written by Lissete Lanuza Sáenz.