Beef S2: Where You've Seen the Cast of Netflix's Anthology Show Before

Ever since the first season of Lee Sung Jin’s Beef landed in 2023, we’ve been waiting for a second helping with a roughly even mix of excitement and trepidation. 

The immediate question that came to everyone’s mind was how Lee would continue to tell a story that he’d already closed in such a satisfying way, which made the quick announcement that the show was to become an anthology series (similar to The White Lotus) all the more pleasing.

If you’ve yet to see it, Beef is a show that begins with a small but consequential interaction between two strangers that escalates into an increasingly bitter and volatile feud. It’s also probably the freshest and most exciting Original that Netflix has produced in the last five years — I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Kevin Feige had tapped Lee to write the upcoming X-Men reboot (which is currently set for release in 2028).

I also wasn’t surprised by the news that Season 2 had attracted such a phenomenal cast to take over from Ali Wong and Steven Yuen — a list of names that features Academy Award winners and nominees, two of the most exciting young actors in Hollywood, and a few genuine South Korean superstars. With all eight episodes of Season 2 now released, what better time for a quick rundown of that star-studded roster? 

Read on to discover more and use the guide below to find out where to stream the Beef cast members’ best work on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere. 

Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin

Does Oscar Isaac need an introduction? Probably not. The one-time Star Wars fighter pilot has been dazzling both mainstream and arthouse audiences ever since his breakout role as the disaffected folk singer in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis in 2013. For Beef Season 2, he stars as Josh Martin, the general manager of an exclusive country club.

In the years since Llewyn, Isaac has continued to balance his franchise work in mega-budget franchises like Dune, The Spider-Verse and the MCU (with Moon Knight) with offbeat turns in the likes of A Most Violent Year, Ex Machina and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. When not on screen, he can usually be found strutting his stuff on the Broadway stage.  

Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin

Take everything we said for Isaac, and you can pretty much say the same for his Llewyn Davis costar Carey Mulligan — who plays Josh’s wife Lindsay in Beef, and whose three nominations for Best Actress at the Oscars (for Promising Young Woman, Maestro and An Education) kind of speak for themselves. 

That said, the real ones know that Mulligan is usually at her very best in quieter roles— the kind of movies where she’s been able to stretch out to the furthest reaches of her talents. You can witness this in Steve McQueen’s Shame, Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive (again, also featuring Isaac) and, most recently, as the fictional folk star Nell Mortimer in The Ballad of Wallis Island. We can only hope that Beef includes a scene where she gets to sing. 

Charles Melton as Austin Davis

If your algorithm is anything like mine, you were likely also bombarded with images from Charles Melton’s saucy photo shoot for i-D magazine, which was exactly the kind of pre-promotion that suggests that an actor is about to become a popular show’s MVP. In Beef, Melton hasn’t been given top billing, exactly, but his role as an aspiring personal trainer who works at Josh’s country club definitely has the aura of a protagonist. 

For Melton, it’s been a steep but steady rise to this point since first appearing in Riverdale (he played the hunky Reggie Mantel) in 2017. Six years later, Melton made a surprising leap to critical acclaim when he starred as the problematically young love interest of Julianne Moore’s housewife in Todd Haynes’ May December, a performance that saw him only narrowly miss out on a nomination at the Oscars the following year. He returned to the big screen amongst the starry cast of Alex Garland’s Warfare last year, but Beef Season 2 is his juiciest role to date. 

Make sure to look out for him in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell later in the year. 

Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller

Unlike Melton, Cailee Spaeny (who plays his character’s fiancée in the series) arguably became an indie star before she made a real splash in the mainstream. She had appeared in small roles in Devs and Vice during her early years as an actress, but her performance as Precilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s biopic, a wonderfully textured and yearning film, is what really put her on the map. 

Since then, Spaeny has chosen her projects wisely — firstly sharing the lead role (with fellow Coppola alum Kirsten Dunst) in Alex Garland’s Civil War before stealing the show in Alien: Romulus. She was also one of the best parts of Wake Up Dead Man last year.

Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park

Her name might not be as familiar as the other names on this list, but the only actor in the Beef cast (in which she plays the billionaire chairwoman of the country club) to have actually won an Oscar is the 78-year-old South Korean star Youn Yuh-jung. She achieved that remarkable feat in 2021 after charming the world with her supporting turn as the no-nonsense grandma in Lee Isaac-Chung’s Minari.

Youn’s career as an actress began in 1971, but her work before Minari was largely confined to her native Korea; although she did appear in two of Hong Sang-so’s films — alongside Isabel Huppert in Another Country and again in Hong’s 2015 masterpiece, Right Now, Wrong Then. Since 2021, Western audiences have gotten even more acquainted with her thanks to her starring role in the Apple TV+ series Pachinko and her small but significant turn in Andrew Ahn’s remake of The Wedding Banquet last year.

William Fichtner as Troy

The name might ring a bell for some people, but William Fichtner is probably best known as one of the great movie “That Guy” of the last 30 years. Indeed, you might not know the name, but you definitely know him for playing the straight-talking astronaut in Armageddon; the pursuing Special Agent in Prison Break; and the shotgun-wielding bank manager in the opening scene of The Dark Knight. You know that guy.

In Beef Season 2, he plays Troy, a prominent member of Josh’s country club.

Mikaela Hoover as Ava

Another familiar name among the smaller roles of Beef S2 is Mikaela Hoover, who plays the trophy wife of Fichtner’s wealthy club member. 

To longtime fans of James Gunn, Hoover will need no introduction — the actress has so far appeared in five of the director's movies, notably The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy and most recently as the Daily Planet journalist Cat Grant in Superman. 

Matthew “BM” Kim as Whoosh

Also amongst the recurring cast of Beef S2 is Matthew Kim, a K-pop rapper and member of Kard who goes by the stage name ‘BM.’ In Beef, we get to see his acting chops for the first time in the role of Woosh, a tennis coach at the country club. 

Song Kang-ho as Dr Kim

Last but certainly not least, Song Kang-ho, a certified legend of South Korean cinema, appears in Beef S2 in a cameo role – the private doctor and second husband of Youn’s billionaire chairwoman. 

Song is already famous around the world for many great films, but most notably for his many collaborations with director Bong Joon-ho — these include starring turns in Memories of Murder, The Host, and Parasite, the last of which saw him narrowly miss out on an Oscar nomination for best actor in 2020.