Beef Season 2 tackles everything from healthcare inequity to class dynamics and diaspora identity, and a majority of it was inspired by real-life events, creator Lee Sung Jin said.
Though initially conceived as a limited series — Season 1 stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as strangers-turned-mortal-enemies after a road rage incident spirals out of control — Beef continues as an anthology, tackling the romantic strife among three generations of partners of varying class levels: Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton), Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) and Josh (Oscar Isaac), and Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung) and Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho).
In a new interview with People, the writer-director said he writes what’s close to home and took inspiration from a “real-life incident” during which he overheard a “a heated debate coming from a couple’s home.” He recounted the argument and noted that he received differing reactions. “It was when younger people reacted like Ashley and Austin. Whereas my similarly-aged or older peers were like, ‘It’s a fight. I mean, who among us [hasn’t fought]?’”
Wanting to craft an “honest” season about “younger love versus older love in 2026,” the three-time Emmy winner said it was vital to “tackle the theme of class” as that “affects every interaction. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.”
To highlight class differences, Ashley experiences a medical emergency further exacerbated by not having health insurance and facing an extended wait time, the latter of which was drawn from real events, as Lee once spent over 10 hours in the ER with his wife.
“I literally just wrote down in my notes app everything that happened, dialogue I overheard, and pretty much copied and pasted it and wrote it in a day,” he explained. “So that episode is not an exaggeration. That is the state of our health industry at the moment.”
Lee, who recently re-upped his overall deal with Netflix, added, “We’re just responding to real life. I’d love to get to a point where society isn’t what it is, so we can write about something other than class. But until then, we’ll just keep trying to shout it from the mountaintops.”
Of setting the season in the affluent Santa Barbara coastal town of Montecito, Lee said a chance house-sitting opportunity in the area allowed him to take advantage of a club membership: “While I was there, I noticed that every member was either a Silent Gen or a Boomer, whereas the employees were Gen Z or Millennial,” he said. “And no matter how hard those employees work, they’re never going to get to be members, which I think is an interesting metaphor or microcosm for where we’re at societally. So we took that metaphor and ran with it.”
Beef Season 2 is currently streaming.
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