The showrunner of “Beef” describes the writers room as an “endless sleepover.” But instead of gossiping about who’s dating whom, collaborators batted around their pasts and infused the darkly comedic anthology series with themes of samsara and the Jungian Shadow.
“So much of the writing process is, and I know they did this on ‘The Sopranos’ too, less about writing and more about sharing,” says Lee Sung Jin, who won three Emmys for Season 1 and is up for three more among the second season’s category-leading 16 nominations. “This show isn’t just born out of stuff from my life, but from all the writers’ lives or observations. We spend hours and hours having an endless sleepover where we’re telling stories of a relative or something that happened in ninth grade.”
Mining that kind of personal data makes sense for a series that reaches farcical extremes while remaining grounded (trapped?) in the minutiae of everyday life’s daily combat. That could mean struggling for the last of a certain flavor of sports drink or withholding access to a doctor.
The main “beef” this season is between two couples: the established, middle-aged Josh and Lindsay, played by Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, and the openhearted, young Austin and Ashley, played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny. There’s also plenty of conflict within the couples, and with other forces. For instance, the show contemplates samsara, a Sanskrit term, per Merriam-Webster, for the “indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma” that features prominently in Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths. One might say “Beef” is in the gutter but looking at the stars.
Lee says they were conscious of making something different from Season 1, “not for newness’ sake, but to tap into the root of what we’re trying to express, which ultimately was this concept of samsara and making sure all our big swings derived from that intention.
“You hear [one of the writers] telling a story and a nugget comes out … and I’m like, ‘That’s perfect for Austin or Ashley or Josh.’ That is why we talk about it as Jungian ‘Shadow work’ … you’re talking Shadows all day and seeing how to take that real-life information and mold it into narrative shapes.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Lee says Carl Jung’s explorations of a person’s darker urges, hidden side and projection directly influenced the writing, especially when confronting those aspects in Lee himself.
“In my most intrusive thoughts, I see parts of myself in all the characters,” he admits. “I can be as anxiously attached as Ashley. I can be as people-pleasey as Austin. I can throw myself into work like Josh. I can grasp for relevance like Lindsay.
“That’s what we talked about: How can we put ourselves in the shoes of these characters to make them three-dimensional, and hopefully the audience can, even when they’re cringing or judging, deep down, feel some Venn diagram with what’s happening?”
For this to be a visceral experience rather than an intellectual exercise, the cast had to be willing not only to throw mud at each other, but to get deep into it themselves. The show finds ways to expose the worst in its characters, their pettiest, most vengeful, greediest parts. (Yes, it’s a comedy. Often.) Then, for some, there are shades of hard-won redemption in selfless acts executed at great cost. Not all break free of the eternal wheel of samsara, and each is caught in its dizzying spin at times.
“Everything hinged on [Josh and Lindsay] and that fight,” Lee says of the first episode’s blistering argument that sets everything in motion. It’s the kind of derisive mutual beatdown that sinks relationships — or that can be the necessary overboard discharge that enables them to stay afloat.
“When I say Carey and Oscar were dialed in, it is an understatement. Every day leading up, we were Zooming for hours and hours, and getting vulnerable. We were going there. Their honesty influenced not only the dialogue but the trajectory of each character. If the writers room was a sleepover, those Zooms were an intense rehabilitative retreat.”
Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan during a crucial argument in the Season 2 premiere of “Beef.”
(Netflix)
Lindsay wounds Josh by saying they haven’t had sex in a year, while their friends, Troy and Ava (William Fichtner and Mikaela Hoover), have sex all the time. Josh shoots back that if he were married to Ava, he’d have sex with her all the time too. (Somewhere, Albee’s George and Martha are saying, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.”)
“Originally, she jabbed back with something about sex,” says Lee. “But Carey stopped and was like, ‘I don’t know why, but I can’t get to the end of the scene. Something feels not truthful.’ If Carey Mulligan’s saying that, you have to take it seriously.”
They discussed it, and Lee suggested, “‘Is it because you feel like this guy has wasted your entire life?’ And immediately she goes, ‘That’s it. Bring the cameras back.’ And boom, she dialed in. We changed [her response] to, ‘You’ve wasted my whole life,’ and that’s the scene you see.”
Lee has a trove of nuggets about the collaborations that shaped “Beef.”
“This whole show was born out of these deep partnerships that I’m so grateful for,” he says. “We created a sense of family and every decision was made together. I know that doesn’t always happen. So I really tried to cherish every minute of it this season.”
The showrunner of “Beef” describes the writers room as an “endless sleepover.” But instead of gossiping about who’s dating whom, collaborators batted around their pasts and infused the darkly comedic anthology series with themes of samsara and the Jungian Shadow.
“So much of the writing process is, and I know they did this on ‘The Sopranos’ too, less about writing and more about sharing,” says Lee Sung Jin, who won three Emmys for Season 1 and is up for three more among the second season’s category-leading 16 nominations. “This show isn’t just born out of stuff from my life, but from all the writers’ lives or observations. We spend hours and hours having an endless sleepover where we’re telling stories of a relative or something that happened in ninth grade.”
Mining that kind of personal data makes sense for a series that reaches farcical extremes while remaining grounded (trapped?) in the minutiae of everyday life’s daily combat. That could mean struggling for the last of a certain flavor of sports drink or withholding access to a doctor.
The main “beef” this season is between two couples: the established, middle-aged Josh and Lindsay, played by Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, and the openhearted, young Austin and Ashley, played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny. There’s also plenty of conflict within the couples, and with other forces. For instance, the show contemplates samsara, a Sanskrit term, per Merriam-Webster, for the “indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma” that features prominently in Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths. One might say “Beef” is in the gutter but looking at the stars.
Lee says they were conscious of making something different from Season 1, “not for newness’ sake, but to tap into the root of what we’re trying to express, which ultimately was this concept of samsara and making sure all our big swings derived from that intention.
“You hear [one of the writers] telling a story and a nugget comes out … and I’m like, ‘That’s perfect for Austin or Ashley or Josh.’ That is why we talk about it as Jungian ‘Shadow work’ … you’re talking Shadows all day and seeing how to take that real-life information and mold it into narrative shapes.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Lee says Carl Jung’s explorations of a person’s darker urges, hidden side and projection directly influenced the writing, especially when confronting those aspects in Lee himself.
“In my most intrusive thoughts, I see parts of myself in all the characters,” he admits. “I can be as anxiously attached as Ashley. I can be as people-pleasey as Austin. I can throw myself into work like Josh. I can grasp for relevance like Lindsay.
“That’s what we talked about: How can we put ourselves in the shoes of these characters to make them three-dimensional, and hopefully the audience can, even when they’re cringing or judging, deep down, feel some Venn diagram with what’s happening?”
For this to be a visceral experience rather than an intellectual exercise, the cast had to be willing not only to throw mud at each other, but to get deep into it themselves. The show finds ways to expose the worst in its characters, their pettiest, most vengeful, greediest parts. (Yes, it’s a comedy. Often.) Then, for some, there are shades of hard-won redemption in selfless acts executed at great cost. Not all break free of the eternal wheel of samsara, and each is caught in its dizzying spin at times.
“Everything hinged on [Josh and Lindsay] and that fight,” Lee says of the first episode’s blistering argument that sets everything in motion. It’s the kind of derisive mutual beatdown that sinks relationships — or that can be the necessary overboard discharge that enables them to stay afloat.
“When I say Carey and Oscar were dialed in, it is an understatement. Every day leading up, we were Zooming for hours and hours, and getting vulnerable. We were going there. Their honesty influenced not only the dialogue but the trajectory of each character. If the writers room was a sleepover, those Zooms were an intense rehabilitative retreat.”
Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan during a crucial argument in the Season 2 premiere of “Beef.”
(Netflix)
Lindsay wounds Josh by saying they haven’t had sex in a year, while their friends, Troy and Ava (William Fichtner and Mikaela Hoover), have sex all the time. Josh shoots back that if he were married to Ava, he’d have sex with her all the time too. (Somewhere, Albee’s George and Martha are saying, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.”)
“Originally, she jabbed back with something about sex,” says Lee. “But Carey stopped and was like, ‘I don’t know why, but I can’t get to the end of the scene. Something feels not truthful.’ If Carey Mulligan’s saying that, you have to take it seriously.”
They discussed it, and Lee suggested, “‘Is it because you feel like this guy has wasted your entire life?’ And immediately she goes, ‘That’s it. Bring the cameras back.’ And boom, she dialed in. We changed [her response] to, ‘You’ve wasted my whole life,’ and that’s the scene you see.”
Lee has a trove of nuggets about the collaborations that shaped “Beef.”
“This whole show was born out of these deep partnerships that I’m so grateful for,” he says. “We created a sense of family and every decision was made together. I know that doesn’t always happen. So I really tried to cherish every minute of it this season.”
