The pair previously appeared in both 2011's 'Drive' and 2013's 'Inside Llewyn Davis'
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
NEED TO KNOW
- Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac spoke exclusively with PEOPLE about working together on season 2 of Netflix’s Beef
- The series marks their third project together and follows the strained marriage of their characters, Josh and Lindsay
- Isaac also tells PEOPLE how the 8-episode season allowed the two actors to spend “a lot of time to build these characters and build this relationship,” now over a decade after they last worked together
Third time's the charm for Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac.
The pair, who finally secured consistent screen time together in Netflix's Beef, spoke exclusively with PEOPLE ahead of the drama's season 2 premiere. In the highly anticipated return of the series, the duo portray couple Josh Martin and Lindsay Crane-Martin, a general manager of a country club and an interior designer.
The tensions in their strained marriage are amplified when employees Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaney) film Josh and Lindsay in a "heated debate" at their home. The new series marks Isaac and Mulligan's third project together, but also their longest time on set with one another.
In both Drive (2011) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), their characters briefly interacted, with Isaac "kind of passing through" the Drive set. While Isaac, 47, tells PEOPLE those interactions were "beautiful," their work on the eight-episode Netflix season has since allowed them to spend "a lot of time to build these characters and build this relationship."
"It was really exciting," Isaac says.
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Mulligan, 40, adds, "There was so much excitement [about] the idea of getting to really work with Oscar properly for a long period of time, on a relationship that is this weird, complicated, true and outrageous."
The Promising Young Woman star also says that "there was just something really kind of freeing about playing this character" and that audiences are meeting Lindsay "at the worst moment of [her] life." But things become more "interesting" as Lindsay tries to "pretend that it's not," Mulligan says.
Credit: Netflix
"I didn't know what to do with that," Mulligan says. "Which is always a really exciting thing for the characters."
As Mulligan explains, the pair spent most of their prep work on the characters with Emmy-winning creator Lee Sung Jin, also known as "Sonny," while on Zoom before filming in Los Angeles. "I feel like we had a lot of time to sort of work through the details of this stuff, the way that they were handling the situation around, but also their own relationship," she says.
"We had a really good track of where they were in terms of seeing them, at the beginning of the absolute worst," Mulligan adds. "We did that the whole way through with Sonny and that was a helpful way to gauge where the relationship was."
Credit: Alison Rosa/ Long Strange Trip
"There was a lot of space to bring ideas," the Frankenstein actor adds, noting they were able to work together to explore the themes and "who these people are."
Isaac also credits Sonny, 44, for being "incredibly open to mining all of our lives and our ideas and really zeroing in on these two characters."
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Season 2 of Beef premieres Thursday, April 16 on Netflix.
Read the full article here
