Warning: This article contains spoilers
The hit show Beef is back for its second season, but the change in cast has come with another difference – costing a whole lot of money as a consequence.
While the first season focused on the rivalry between Korean actors, Steven Yuen and Ali Wong, this time it’s set in the world of Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan.
The pair, who play Josh and Lindsay, a married couple whose marriage starts to go wrong.
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However, it only starts to really fall apart after they meet newly engaged lovers, Cailee Spaney and Charles Melton, as Ashley and Austin.
The eight-episode season sees Isaac and Mulligan fight (physically and emotionally), destroy their surroundings and then kiss and make up – but a lot of that apparently occurred as they listened to music.
But it’s this music that ended up costing the production company a lot of money.
That’s because, as reported by the Independent, creator Lee Sung Jin, said the actors’ earphones ‘cost a fortune to paint out’ in post-production editing.
Sung Jin said to the actors in a podcast episode: “You two were always playing songs as you performed.”
Apparently, it all began when Isaac played one scene with a Moog synthesizer, but loved it so much he started wearing earphones in more scenes and listening to music.
In one instance, he and Mulligan both wore them and chose a song that timed well to their kiss scene, leading to them to try their hands at listening to music that suited their scenes for the foreseeable on the shoot.
“That was amazing because it timed out unbelievably well to the moment,” Mulligan said. “The beat would drop on the [kiss]. We were so delighted every time, we were like, ‘It did it again!’”
Isaac added: “Yeah, the rhythm was lining up. We had to do that because you couldn't have the music playing to cover up the audio, so we liked [wearing the earwigs] so much. We were like, ‘Why don't we keep doing that in other scenes?’ And so we started doing that and it was great.”
However, Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That) song turned out to be a bad fit for a blackmailing scene.
Mulligan admitted: “We did so many takes on the blackmail scene that eventually I was like, ‘Let’s do Meat Loaf!’ Halfway through, we were like, ‘No, that doesn't work.’”
I wonder if you can see hints of the pair jamming to music in their scenes, even if the earpieces have been edited out.