Jake Schreier has spent the past few years moving between very different scales of filmmaking. He directed Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” and is now preparing to enter the world of “X-Men,” but in between those massive productions, Schreier found a way to return to the more intimate and uncomfortable world of “Beef.” For its second season, creator Lee Sung Jin, better known as Sonny, entrusted his longtime friend and collaborator with two particularly important assignments: opening the season and closing it.
The first season of “Beef” turned a road rage encounter between Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) into an increasingly destructive feud, earning 13 Emmy nominations and ultimately winning Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, along with acting wins for both Yeun and Wong. Season 2 embraces the show’s anthology format by leaving Danny and Amy behind for an entirely new set of characters and a different kind of conflict. Schreier, Lee and Kitao Sakurai split directing duties across the eight episodes, with Schreier once again responsible for establishing the visual language of the season before returning to bring the story to its conclusion.
This time, Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan play Josh and Lindsay, a wealthy married couple whose volatile relationship is inadvertently witnessed by Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny), two employees at the country club Josh manages. What begins as an opportunity for leverage gradually pulls all four into an increasingly destructive web of ambition, resentment and desire. The change in cast did little to slow the show’s awards momentum. Season 2 earned 16 Emmy nominations, the most of any limited or anthology series this year, including acting nominations for Isaac, Mulligan, Melton and Youn Yuh-jung. Schreier earned his own nomination for directing the season finale, “It Will Stay This Way And You Will Obey,” while Lee was also nominated for directing “Oh, The Comfort, The Inexpressible Comfort.”
For Schreier, the premiere presented a challenge not unlike directing a pilot. Season 1 began with a burst of road rage that immediately defined Danny and Amy’s conflict. Season 2 deliberately takes longer to reveal what kind of “Beef” it will become. Schreier and Lee instead wanted audiences to sense that something dangerous was building beneath what initially resembles a smaller relationship drama. As Schreier explains, the goal was to communicate “a level of almost violence or intent even in scenes that wouldn’t normally have it,” allowing the season’s eventual escalation to feel inevitable rather than abrupt.
There were also rules from the first season that Schreier wasn’t interested in abandoning. One of the most revealing is surprisingly simple: “We learned in Season 1 that a scene of ‘Beef’ never really works unless someone is telling a lie, either to someone else or to themselves.” That deception informs the show’s visual language as much as its writing. Schreier carried over the deliberately unbalanced perspectives he developed in Season 1, often using different lenses and distances depending on whose point of view dominates a scene. With four, and sometimes as many as six, competing perspectives this season, determining whose experience should guide the camera became considerably more complicated.
Schreier’s understanding of Lee’s sensibility comes from a relationship that predates “Beef.” The two were friends for five or six years before making Season 1, and their collaboration has since extended beyond the series. When Lee directed BTS member RM’s 2024 music video for “Come Back to Me,” Schreier joined him as a producer and worked on the edit. That relationship made returning for Season 2 worth navigating an unusually difficult schedule. Schreier was still in post-production on “Thunderbolts*” while directing portions of “Beef,” at times “sneak[ing] out of the editing room” to shoot scenes. The day after “Thunderbolts*” opened, he was on a plane to Seoul to scout the “Beef” finale.
That finale brings the season’s cycles of ambition and dissatisfaction full circle. Ashley and Austin appear to have won, while Josh has seemingly lost almost everything, yet Schreier sees the ending less in terms of victory or happiness than acceptance. The final Samsara image reflects Lee’s interest in whether anyone can truly escape those cycles. “I guess I look at it more through that lens of who is at a point of acceptance or not within that cycle,” Schreier says.
In conversation with Awards Focus, Schreier discusses the challenge of bookending “Beef” Season 2, working with Isaac, Mulligan, Melton and Spaeny, finding empathy for characters behaving badly and shooting the finale in Korea. He also reflects on his longtime creative partnership with Lee, why moving between “Beef” and Marvel doesn’t feel as different as audiences might assume, and what continues to draw him back to the collaborators he trusts.
Awards Focus: Congratulations on another great season of “Beef.” I found it interesting that you directed the bookends, Episodes 1 and 8. How did that happen? Do you know why Sonny specifically selected you for those episodes, or was it more a coincidence of scheduling and timing?
Jake Schreier: I think there was a desire to set the tone because it is a whole new season, so the first episode almost felt like a pilot. We’d always talked about wanting to make sure that I could set the language of what this new season was going to be, along with Sonny, obviously. Every time we work together, it’s an intense collaboration.
The finale worked out nicely because that was in Korea at the end. I was directing “Beef” while I was in post on “Thunderbolts*,” so I would sneak out of the editing room to go direct scenes here and there.
Then, right after “Thunderbolts*” came out that Friday, I got on a flight to Seoul that Saturday and started scouting for the finale. It’s obviously a very emotional episode. There are also some technical challenges and stunt work, and I think Sonny wanted to have my eyes on that.
AF: You talked about setting the tone and the first episode almost feeling like a pilot. What was most important to get right in that episode to establish the season’s visual and tonal identity, knowing you wouldn’t direct another episode until the end?
Schreier: The way “Beef” tends to work, we don’t really go episode by episode. It tends to be block shot. So there is a lot spread out, and you’re kind of in and out and around. I would check in even when I wasn’t directing, just because obviously we work closely together, and I want to be there as an EP on the show as well.
I think for this season, Sonny had really decided he wanted it to have a different feel and a different direction. Because it’s more of a slow burner, obviously in Season 1 you have this amazing cold open that just hooks you from the very beginning. We certainly have a cold open in this one that hooks you, but over the course of that first episode, and even the first few episodes, it is a slower burn than Season 1.
Something we talked a lot about was wanting to communicate to the audience, I think a lot with Finneas’ amazing score and with music, that the danger and the stakes were to come. While we were watching this kind of smaller, observed, almost parlor drama between these couples, it was going to become the show that you were familiar with from Season 1, but just get there from a different kind of angle, if that makes sense.
So it was a lot about almost letting the audience know that there was more going on underneath the surface than you might see, and communicating a level of almost violence or intent even in scenes that wouldn’t normally have it. Just so that was part of the language of the show, and when we end up where we end up and all of that is woven together, it doesn’t feel like it’s taking too much of a left turn.
AF: Fans came into Season 2 with expectations of what “Beef” means. What was important to carry over from Season 1 while still giving this story its own identity?
Schreier: More than anything, “Beef” is Sonny’s very unique voice. It’s such a specific voice, and it really is about the way that he sees the world and sees characters.
We learned in Season 1 that a scene of “Beef” never really works unless someone is telling a lie, either to someone else or to themselves. I think you see that continued in this season. So much of it is about really getting in there with these incredible actors and Sonny and finding those moments where it’s really about what’s going on on their faces in between the lines as much as in what they’re saying, and clocking these little moments of deception, whether it be self-deception or of another. So the camera has to be close to people for those moments.
There is this carried-over visual language that we set in Season 1, this kind of unbalanced perspective thing that I got into where you’re never matching lenses or sizing in the scenes. It’s always closer to Amy and Danny and a longer lens further away for the reverse.
It just gets more complicated this season because there are four, if not maybe six, perspective characters as opposed to just two. It’s very clear in Season 1 who that should be in a given scene. In this case, Sonny and I would have to have a lot of discussions about whose scene it should be weighted to and when that transfers, even sometimes within the scene, so that both perspectives are represented but still within the language that we established.
AF: What always works in “Beef” is that the characters are deeply flawed, but by the end you’re somehow rooting for all of them. In Episode 1, you’re starting with this explosive confrontation between Lindsay and Josh that Ashley and Austin witness. How do you make that disturbing while leaving room for the audience to eventually empathize with these characters?
Schreier: It’s a very good question. It really just takes a lot of detailed work between Sonny and these incredible actors to dial in these moments.
We rehearsed that scene so much before we were even on set. Then there were still moments when we got on set where, in the moment, Carey would say, when he throws the glass first, “I can’t match it. I can’t meet that energy. I just shrink.”
You have these incredible actors that will never give you a false note. No matter what the beats are and no matter how much they’ve worked with Sonny, they’re never going to let it be false. So you have to listen to that and then reshape the scene.
Sonny is so good at that, about responding in the moment. For somebody who has such an architecture to the season and his writing, he’s very nimble about responding to that stuff on set so that you’re crafting a scene that feels honest to both those characters.
I think the delicate part is that it needs to feel like one thing to Ashley and Austin, and it needs to feel like another thing to our audience. Not that it’s fine that this is happening, but to have some understanding of how we get there and what actually is underneath it. It’s about the way they feel within that moment versus when even they see themselves through the lens of that video camera, recognizing something that isn’t there.
There has to be a lot of trust for the audience. I think there are a lot of honest conversations about people bringing themselves to the work and really being open about putting ideas that seem challenging into the show, and then trusting that if you keep it honest in that way and you come to understand those characters, that is the power of narrative art. It can be this sort of empathy engine for people that we didn’t imagine we could feel empathy for. We can start to understand those decisions and root for things that we might never have thought we could root for.
That is always my favorite compliment, when I meet people and they’re like, “I thought no way I could care for that person.” And then by the end, “I felt so wrapped up in their storyline.”
I think that’s really the thing that’s true in Season 1 of what Sonny’s going for, really trying to let you into characters that you might pass over otherwise. It’s always nice when it feels like that lands.
AF: The show constantly balances tension with absurdity and humor. How do you manage that tipping point so a scene doesn’t go too far in either direction?
Schreier: It’s a really good question. For some reason, it’s not a discussion that we have a lot of on set. It might just be that whatever Sonny’s tone is, is the thing that I think I kind of just get.
But we do laugh about it sometimes. I remember when we were shooting the escape scene in Korea and there’s this joke about how far Charles can throw a melon. You’re like, this is maybe only a minute after someone got shot in the head. Somehow the show can hold those tones.
I think it’s due to Sonny being very careful about the writing and having both this real prestige and comedy background of understanding that if that comedy or absurdity is still rooted in character, about Austin’s self-image and Ashley’s doubt, and it doesn’t just feel like a random aside, you can actually get away with more than you would think in terms of holding the tonal balance of a show.
AF: The different couples have also been associated with different seasons. Did that affect you as a director? Were there different visual cues or rules for each couple?
Schreier: No. Obviously we’re cognizant of what’s going on narratively and where they are and the progression.
I think what we did talk a lot about was, for instance, Cailee and I would talk about just making sure that you don’t get ahead of things. You leave room. She’s going to become this very kind of canny operator by the end of the season. Even though there are moments of manipulation in the first episode, we have to be careful that her character isn’t necessarily cognizant of that.
It’s almost like she has a talent for it that’s unrecognized that she will become more in control of. Because if we start her too adept at that, it’ll limit the progression.
Sonny is very, very interested in cycles and progressions. There are all these really interesting moments where the younger couple will do something the older couple mentioned a few episodes before. It’s just making sure to leave room for those progressions to happen so that you feel like you’re actually watching something evolve.
AF: Cailee and Charles are very accomplished actors despite how young they are, and then you have Carey, Oscar and this legendary Korean cast. How much are you shaping performances versus letting actors cook and finding those moments on set?
Schreier: They’re incredible, and mostly you let them cook. But I guess I wouldn’t say that shaping is really in conflict with letting them cook, because it isn’t about dictating a performance or a rhythm. As long as it’s honest and it works, we’re up for anything.
From an improv perspective, there’s not a lot of that on set. But that’s more of a thing where Sonny will be exhaustive about working through the scripts with them and taking all of the actors’ input and making it feel like them.
There’ll even be these funny moments where they’ll read a line and realize that it was something they had said and Sonny noticed it and then put it into their character’s voice. The roles were becoming more and more like them as it went on.
I think what’s incredible about these actors is that it can still feel like improv even within the lines. You’re never getting the same take, the same rhythm back. You’re always getting this very true version of the thing, and then your job is just to nudge it in different directions so that the architecture of the story holds.
But you always want that to come from an honest place where it feels like they’re finding it in the moment and those decisions haven’t been made ahead of time. But the headline is we’re very lucky. Very, very lucky to have that cast.
AF: Going back to the finale, my takeaway was wondering whether each character is actually happy with where they end up. Even Josh is in prison, but is he actually happier there? How intentional was that idea when you were directing the episode?
Schreier: That’s an interesting question. We didn’t talk about happiness a lot, I don’t think, but there definitely was a lot of intentionality in the writing about where we find these people.
Sonny is very, very interested in rises and falls. In theory, Ashley and Austin sort of win, but of course it’s undercut by the fact of, what have they given up? What have they lost?
In theory, in normal stakes terms, I guess Josh has lost because he is in prison, but he clearly feels more connected with himself than he has at any other point in the season. There’s a sense of peace to him. You could interpret that as happiness for sure.
And revealing the Samsara image at the end, Sonny was really interested in this idea that there is no real way out of these cycles, in this wheel, other than in a sort of acceptance of them and the fact that you are where you are along that continuum.
When you think about the ending, I guess I look at it more through that lens of who is at a point of acceptance or not within that cycle.
AF: What was it like shooting in Korea? Were there any challenges that surprised you?
Schreier: It was such a wonderful experience. Sonny and I had gone before. He made a music video for RM from BTS, and I went and helped out.
We both love the cinema of the country so much. The fact that Bong came and visited set, and that you’re working with [inaudible], who’s been this legend to us since we fell in love with movies. I think you can also see in Sonny’s work the influences of those actors and directors, like Director Park.
So then to get to see his words be said by the person who influenced the work, and for him to be as brilliant in person as you would imagine, that was just such a special experience.
And to be there with YJ, I think it’s an incredible opportunity to get to go shoot in another culture and another filmmaking culture, and to get to work with this amazing crew over there. It just felt very special overall.
AF: Your career is fascinating. You’ve done music videos, “Beef” and now these huge Marvel projects. What kinds of stories interest you most these days, and does that guide the projects you’re choosing?
Schreier: I think more than anything, when you find creative relationships like the ones that I’ve been lucky enough to find, like with someone like Sonny and so many of the people that work on both “Beef” and the Marvel stuff, a lot of it is just, if you have the opportunity to keep those things going, then that’s sort of how I look at it.
I don’t know how curated it is other than just seeing opportunities and if you think there’s something interesting. Obviously, “X-Men” is something I’ve loved since I was a kid and Sonny loved it. If we can get Sonny and Joanna back together and we can all work together on something that we love, no matter the context or the scope, what a great opportunity to be able to do that.
The same with “Beef” Season 2. It was hard to fit in timing-wise, but the thought of it happening without me and not getting to work with my friends again on something so special…
Sonny and I were friends for five or six years, I think, before “Beef” Season 1. So there’s an aspect of it where it’s just so fulfilling and nice to see your friend get to make something so personal and have it connect with so many people. If you get to actually help them make that, and it feels like you’re bringing something to it, then what a great feeling.
AF: Despite that continuity of working with people you’ve built these relationships with, what’s challenging about moving between something like “Beef” and massive productions like “Thunderbolts” and “X-Men”? How do you shift your brain between those scales?*
Schreier: It doesn’t feel that different. I guess it’s more all the stuff around it that maybe feels different.
There was some casting speculation on the internet around “Beef” Season 2, I guess. Obviously there’s more of that when it comes to the other projects. I think when you’re actually making it, hopefully it’s about characters and it’s about telling a story. You’ve got to get your shots and there’s a limited amount of time.
I know it sounds odd to say, but you’re rushing plenty on the big ones too. It’s not like you’re just sitting around with tons of time. You expand to the box that you’re in.
There’s always challenges in a day and decisions about what’s most important and what moment you need to get above everything else.
Again, I’ve been so lucky. The casts in both have been incredible. When you look at the cast of “Thunderbolts*,” I just feel extraordinarily fortunate overall between both of them.
Maybe it’s just because I’m inside of it, but I don’t view it as being a hard turn or feeling so different. Maybe, again, that’s because I get to work with my friends in both cases. Obviously the context is a little different, but I think we’re just trying to tell great stories with great actors and incredible crews. I feel lucky to get to do that in any respect.
AF: It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations again. I hope we see a “Beef” Season 3 and beyond.
Schreier: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.