The uneasy tension that pervades the Netflix anthology series Beef doesn’t just come from the characters — the core four of whom are played by Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Cailee Spaeny, and Charles Melton — but from the world surrounding them and the clothes they wear.
Production designer Grace Yun and costume designer Olga Mill work with series creator Lee Sung Jin to make every inch of Beef rife with conflict, and in the latest Creator Diaries video, the two department heads explain the ethos behind the looks.
Yun also spoke with Gold Derby about her design process and how the four seasons became a running theme through Season 2 and its various romantic pairings.
Gold Derby: You worked on the first season of Beef. How did Lee Sung Jin explain the connection between the seasons to you, heading into the second?
Grace Yun: My creative discussions with Sonny always come from character or an overarching theme. There were certain themes he wanted to continue to explore into season two, which are economic disparities, the never-ending cycle of feeling dissatisfaction, and trying to strive for some solution to that. But in Season 2, it was more complex with the addition of these generational divides and also the dynamics between partnerships, so the first thing we discussed was the aesthetics associated with different generations, like Boomer and Millennial and Gen Z. What does success mean for someone of that generation? How is that visually defined and materially defined?
Let’s start with Austin and Ashley, whose home is very much that of a couple in their 20s.
We really wanted to capture this feeling of new romance, this springtime freshness. We assigned one of the four seasons to each character’s world, and for Ashley and Austin, we thought that this pastel, warm, fuzzy, glowing, new love vibe was correct for them, but also in particular their home. It’s definitely a starter home. There are things like the kitchen tile and the bathroom that feel quite dated but still charming. There are decor elements that feel thrifted and found and mismatched. We also wanted to fill the home with things that felt sentimental to them, so there’s a lot of photographs that Cailee and Charles had graciously sent us, and we made collages out of them.
How were the other three seasons assigned?
For the country club, we assigned summer. It was an easy one because when I was doing research and actually touring country clubs along with Sonny, the cast, and our creative team, we just felt there was this feeling of relaxation being catered to. Everything was such a dreamy state there. The greens are super manicured. The pool is always clean. There’s cocktail hours. There’s food. There’s golf. It was all activities of leisure. Then for Parks’ worlds and for Seoul, we chose this feeling of a wintry vibe, where things are quite a limited palette and all within her curated, restrictive world. For Josh and Lindsay, we assigned fall, mainly because of where the characters are in their own marriage and midlife, feeling like their dreams are in decline.
You really see that in Josh and Lindsay’s house, which is in a perpetual state of renovation.
It started with this feeling of stagnance amongst chaos. When you’re stuck in a transitional state, it causes so much stress and anxiety, so that’s when the renovation theme came about. The house is also completely cluttered with Lindsay’s maximalist style and ambitions to become an interior decorator. The location of the house, too, we wanted it to feel like when they first saw it, they saw beautiful potential to fulfill their dreams of running their own bespoke B&B, so the grounds had to feel beautiful and somewhat expansive.
The other space I’d love to learn more about is the Trochos medical center. When I spoke with Lee and director Jake Schreier, they said the set was designed with the one-take fight in mind.
It was a bit of a simultaneous thing. I was sketching out the layout for that operating room while I was in Korea, and then sending all the schematics to our art director, who was still in LA because the shoot in LA was still going on. Jake and Sonny with the stunt team were planning out the beats in LA, and then once they flew over, we’re doing rehearsals within the set space. It was one of the more complicated, but fun aspects of the planning. I wanted to make it almost like an operating room fun house maze, where there were all these stations that the characters are running into, how surgical equipment can instantly become weaponry, and the blood and fat lipid being able to splash around and be slightly gore. It was a lot of fun to plan out.
The next installment in the “Making Of” series debuts June 1, featuring the series’ direction, cinematography, and editing.
This article and video were presented by Netflix.
