Charles Melton Talks Beef: Season 2 and His Next Film With The Daniels

After sweeping the Emmys a few years ago, Beef, the conflict anthology series, returned and is yet again bathed in praise from both critics and audiences. Starring Carey Mulligan, Oscar Issac, Cailee Spaeny, and Charles Melton, this season centers on Gen-Z and millennial couples in crisis working at a luxury resort recently sold to a Korean chaebol family.

For the latest Awards Tour podcast, Emmy-nominated actor Charles Melton chats with Rotten Tomatoes Awards Editor Jacqueline Coley to discuss his darkly hilarious role as Austin Davis in Netflix’s Beef: Season 2. The Riverdale actor reveals how Beef creator Lee Sung-Jin wrote the role specifically for him and how his Korean American background helped shape the character. He also shares what it was like working alongside renowned actors Youn Yuh-jung and Song Kang-ho, whose seemingly effortless performances made the experience especially joyful. Melton also detailed the independent filmmakers he hopes to collaborate with and teases his upcoming movie directed by The Daniels, the Oscar-winning duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Jacqueline Coley for Rotten Tomatoes: Congrats, but please tell me what it was like waking up to all the accolades on Emmy nominations morning?

Charles Melton: I was in Paris, so I had the full day before I found out about the Emmys around 6:30 or 8:30 in the evening. I had the whole day thinking about it. I really didn’t think about it. [laughs] But I was with my wife and my daughter, and we were doing what we usually do when we’re in Paris. And the mundane, the beautiful mundane, and there’s a part of me — I think everyone can relate to this — that’s been in some sort of position like this, where you don’t care or you don’t wanna act like you care, or it’s not a big deal, but, “Oh, yeah, let’s just go get ice cream,” or “Let’s go do this, let’s go do that.” And then about a minute before the announcements were gonna come out, I was like, “Hey, it’s about to come on in a minute. Should we turn it on?” [laughs] And, um, it was a very beautiful moment.

And so many people worked hard on this show. It was great to get the recognition from my peers in the Television Academy- and all categories where people that worked so hard on our show were nominated. And even the people that didn’t get nominated, we all represent this collective. Being a part of something great in a project, it’s everyone. There are 300 cast and crew, you know, in between the cast that’s seen on the screen. Everyone’s very proud, and I’m proud that we got recognized.

Beef: Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.

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