Is Gen Z that different to Millennials? The creator of Beef has some thoughts

Jared Richards: Season one was inspired loosely by your own road-rage experience. What was the impetus for season two? How did we end up in the country club?

LSJ: Real life smacked me in the face again when I overheard a heated debate coming from a neighbour’s home. The incident itself wasn’t that interesting, but what was fascinating was everyone’s reactions to it. When I retold the story, my Gen Z peers were aghast: “Did you call 911?” Whereas my Millennial and Gen X peers shrugged and were like: “I mean, who among us hasn’t screamed in the privacy of their own home?”

Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan star in the second season of hit show Beef.Beef

Clearly, generations have differing ideas of what love and marriage should look like, so let’s explore that. And you can’t really explore that honestly in 2026 without capitalism being a huge variable, as class divides permeate every interaction in life.

The country club is a really interesting microcosm of what we’re going through today as a society. From my observations, most members are Boomers and Silent Gen and the employees are mostly Gen Z and Millennials – and no matter how hard they work, they’re never going to be members. As Austin says: “Everyone grabbed the bag before we could.”

That line arrives while Austin morally rationalises blackmailing Josh and Lindsay. In his eyes, this is a form of wealth distribution. Do you think that rationale holds up?

It’s complicated – and that’s why the show lives in such a grey area. We never paint with black and white. When the system is rigged, when people constantly feel life’s screws turn against them, what are they supposed to do?

Everyone has a very strong sense of self. As our societal structures collapse, we are going to try any which way to keep our head above water. But where do principles and morals come in? That’s something that everyone has to decide for themselves.

This season, Austin is the most principled to start. He wants to do the right thing. He’s trying to live a life in service of others – whether of Ashley, his mother or the club itself. But he starts to crumble.

Whether the show judges those actions, I’m not sure. I certainly try not to. I think we’re all very similar: when exposed to hurdles, we all jump the same.

Charles Melton as Austin Davis and Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller in Beef.Netflix

As a Millennial, I loved all the needle drops of ’00s and ’10s indie-pop from Phoenix, Flume x Disclosure and Hot Chip (who also cameo!) These songs clearly mean a lot to Josh and Lindsay too, holding memories of their halcyon days. Meanwhile, Austin and Ashley are barely living their own 20s. They’re working all the time with no expendable income. Was that a financial crunch you wanted to hone in on?

100 per cent. Josh and Lindsay are constantly looking back, which I find myself doing quite often in my mid-40s too. When my generation was in our 20s, if you met the person you loved, you thought life was going to be an endless dance party. Girl Talk would be around forever, and we would just be mashing up songs and dancing until 3am well into our 80s.

Compare that to Ashley and Austin, who repeatedly mention that all they need is each other and the beach. Then, in episode six, Austin laments that they haven’t even been down to the beach in a long time. They don’t even get the luxury of that! Instead, they’re heating up frozen DiGiorno’s pizza and trying to do their finances with their free time.

The juxtapositions were very fun to play with because I think Beef lives in the specificities. Even the spreadsheet that they’re doing their finances on! As a Millennial, I do that on PowerPoint, but Gen Z use Google Drive on their phone. Those little things were really fun to dig into.

Charles Melton as Austin in season two of Beef.Netflix

One music moment that stands out is in episode three, where Ashley jumps out of a car and power-walks away from Austin chanting the lyrics to Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk. What’s up with that?

I get these random ideas sometimes! But Ashley clearly has some form of anxiety disorder to throw herself out of a moving car, and she’s probably had panic attacks before. So I looked into what people do when they have them and these TikToks that show ways to ground yourself, which is why she takes out a piece of gum and starts chewing it. Another way to push through a panic attack is to start singing.

The thought of her singing Uptown Funk as her go-to grounding song just really tickled me, and it felt like the right song for her age, given when those panic attacks started. I was very ready to change it, but once I heard Cailee do it, I was like: “That’s perfect.”

Speaking of TikTok-as-therapy, Austin and Ashley communicate very indirectly, like they’ve learned these phrases from social media videos. We also see them both ask Reddit for relationship advice instead of speaking to each other. Josh and Linsday aren’t a model relationship, but at least their fights are raw and real. Do you think the couple’s differing approaches to conflict are generational or come with age?

I think social media’s a trap that everyone can get stuck in. But couples like Josh and Lindsay have been together for 15-plus years. Social media can play a part, but you’ve been through it. You’ve had some knock-down, drag-out fights. The mask is off.

Whereas Ashley and Austin, they’ve only been together for a year and a half, and they think that this Instagram Reel therapeutic speak equals depth. Even the way that Austin speaks about capitalism: he’s clearly someone who doesn’t click on the article. He just saw the Instagram headline.

This season takes a big swing in its final episodes. The two couples fight for their lives in Seoul, becoming collateral in Chairwoman Park’s cover-up of her plastic surgeon husband’s medical malpractice. When did this plot line enter the script?

Pretty early on. After season one, I shot a music video in Korea for RM, and was exposed for the first time to Korean chaebol society – the family-run conglomerations. It was a part of Korean society we hadn’t explored in season one. Plus, with the theme of time being so prominent this season, adding in the world of Korean skincare felt really appropriate.

Not the recommended Korean skincare routine: Song Kang-ho as Dr Kim in Beef.Netflix

With Chairwoman Park and Dr Kim (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho), they just wanted to have fun, vacation and go on nice dinners. They were tired of the drama from their first marriages. But we wanted to show that even in the winter of your life, when shit hits the fan – like the death of a patient – that’s when this carefully orchestrated second marriage will be put to the test.