Charles Melton is 100% Beef

The star of “Beef’s” raucous sophomore season talks salmon DNA, Saturn returns, and the importance of tuna casserole acting.

written by NICOLAIA RIPS
photography CHARLIE DENIS
styling GADIR RAJAB

“You know that scene in episode *REDACTED* where I’m running? I tore my hamstring! I had a little baby tear because I was running so fast, and I didn’t warm up, so I had to get a shot in my hamstring with salmon DNA.” Charles Melton looks at me wide-eyed, “Every time I squeezed my leg, caviar came out.” The 35-year-old shakes his head, as if he can’t even believe what he’s telling me. Melton navigates body horror the same way he navigates everything: with plenty of decency, intellect, humor, and a charmingly Cheshire cat grin. But we weren’t here to talk about salmon DNA or approaching things rationally, we’re here to talk about Beef.

Melton is the star of the new season of Netflix and A24’s hit anthology series Beef. The first season was a major coup both publicly and critically, nabbing eight Emmy awards for its cast and creator Lee Sung Jin. This season, set at a country club, follows a working class Zoomer couple (Melton and an increasingly frenetic Cailee Spaeny) whose lives are forever altered by an unfortunate encounter with their boss (Oscar Isaac) and his wife (Carey Mulligan). 

In 1972 MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz introduced the idea of the Butterfly effect: a minute action, equivalent to that of a butterfly flapping its wings, can snowball into extreme consequences. That is the world Beef exists in—where egos beget crises and small actions have immediate and outsized outcomes—and Melton’s character, the gentle gymfluencer Austin Davis, provides a temporary oasis of sanity.

Austin is both the season’s comic relief and its moral center. For an actor, it’s a tightrope walk that could easily fall into caricature, but in Melton’s capable hands the character breathes. He deftly toggles between relatability and indescribable craziness. That Melton’s Davis is such a nice guy is what makes the season’s tensions all the more anxiety-inducing. It’s also a role that Melton felt inherently connected to, “I loved being a part of Beef. Austin being a character that’s half-Korean and half-white, and navigating all these things with this identity…I mean, it was so much fun for me.”

When I tell him, over our Zoom call, that I found his character funny, Melton gets serious. The depth he aimed to bring to the role was informed by his appreciation for the genre-bending of Korean cinema. Korean cinema was one of the reasons he fell in love with acting in the first place. “They’re not playing the comedy, but the context of the situation and the circumstance makes it hilarious for the audience,” he says of his favorite Korean films.

Beef marks the first time that Melton, who is Korean-American, has ever worked with a Korean director. It’s been a long time dream of his, one he’s been vocal about in the past. “Have you seen No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook?” Melton asks. I admit, unfortunately, I haven’t. He persists, “If Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho had a baby, it would be Sonny”—a nickname of Lee Sung Jin— “What Sonny’s doing, as far as taking Korean cinema and injecting it into Hollywood is incredible.” Before Beef, Lee Sung Jin spent time in the writers’ rooms of dark comedies Silicon Valley and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. During production for Beef Sonny sent the cast a watchlist: Amadeus, Newsroom, Mother, Handmaiden, Parasite, The Sopranos. Melton recounts Sonny telling him about the show. “He said, it’s like 40% of Sopranos. You know when Tony Sopranos is hiding or lying. You’re kind of in the mind with him.” What Melton isn’t saying is how difficult that proximity can be for actors to portray—it’s what makes Melton’s performance so spectacular. 

Melton leans towards his laptop camera, eager to dissect the details: “Was there a specific scene that you found funny?” In an early introduction to Austin we find him upset by the death of a bee. It’s weirdly and discomfitingly hilarious, and immediately drops us into Austin’s reality. Melton agrees, “We’re experiencing the drama, the propulsiveness, while simultaneously laughing at the expense of what these characters are going through, that’s so human and complex, right?” 

Behind the scenes, the filming was just as fun. Melton describes Sonny giving him direction in a particularly silly moment, “He goes, ‘In this version you just started dating someone, and you get invited to the family dinner. Her aunt’s made cold tuna casserole, and it doesn’t look good, but she offers it to you, and you want to be polite, but also respectful’ and I’m like, yeah, yeah, I got it. It’s so funny but also a measure of just the immense brilliance that Sonny has in directing.” He grimaces at the idea of cold tuna casserole, even the memory of acting like he might eat it overtaking his senses.

Melton’s gift of shucking the artifice from a character and playing towards vulnerability, even in the campiest circumstances, is what has made him a bonafide star. It’s an ability he’s been honing since Riverdale, the CW adaption of the Archie comics that first introduced the world to Melton. Back in 2023, when i-D last profiled the actor, he said, “Riverdale was my Julliard.” Todd Haynes’s 2023 psychodrama May December, then, would be his post-grad debut. He emerged, after these two endlessly viral and celebrated projects as a square-jawed powerhouse of an actor, one of the most interesting in the current crop of young Hollywood, appreciative of process, and fluent in the language of camp. 

Born in Alaska to an American father in the armed services and a Korean mother, Melton spent his adolescence in Kansas playing football, continuing the sport into college. His football background helped him hone an easy physicality (which he uses in both slapstick and drama) and athlete’s mentality. “A professional athlete doesn’t just show up to the event. They train, they work,” he says, explaining that to him, acting is not just showing up to set, but honing the craft in the off-hours. “I’m very meticulous and take an athlete’s obsessive approach to work.”In a very art-imitates-life twist, like his character Reggie Mantle in Riverdale, Beef’s Austin Davis is also an accomplished football player. I ask him if that’s something he looks for in roles (former football players?) and he laughs, waving off his abilities on the field, “I was, like, a preferred walk-on at Kansas State.” For Melton, the right project is all about the director. He dreamily rattles off a list of directors he’d love to work with: Joachim Trier, Paolo Sorrentino, Lucas Dhont, Park Chan-ook, Bong Joon Ho, Thomas Videnberg. He’d love to work with Todd Haynes again, of course. Currently on his slate is Greg Kwedar’s Saturn Return, a Netflix romance starring Melton and Rachel Brosnahan. 

The “Saturn return” is the moment in a person’s life, between age 27 and their early thirties, when Saturn finishes a complete orbit, coming back around to the position it was in at their birth. Life is supposed to come into alignment. “Nic!” Melton exclaims when I ask him about his Saturn return, “I just got out. I’m 35!” Melton reflects on the time with joy, “It’s amazing.” He stares at me, genuinely and contagiously happy, when I explain I’m still amidst my Saturn return. “You’re gonna have so much fun, and you’re gonna conquer so many different successes and grow as an artist, as a journalist, and everything. Like, good for you, you’re about to be reborn!” Melton says, offering some more wisdom, “Whenever someone’s like, ’I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m at’, I’m like, perfect. You’re exactly where you need to be.” 

Melton is absolutely where he needs to be, and he knows it. He’s calm and focused, with a easy relationship to his past (“I don’t think it’s healthy to hold grudges, but also, I’m a human being. I think there are a lot of things in life that will come up that can help redefine or shape you into a version of yourself that you aspire to be”) and endless gratitude for his future. He’s working with his dream collaborators, doing things he’s proud of, and recently welcomed his first child with his partner Camille Summers-Valli.  “I’m so lucky, you know?” He name-checks every single Beef cast member, telling me how deeply he enjoyed filming with them. Cheekily he tells me, “Now we get to show off the school project.” 

Part of the season was filmed in South Korea and Melton’s extended family often dropped by the set. “I’ve never felt so connected to my Koreaness.” Melton’s mom actually makes a cameo in Beef. “She was asking me about her SAG card. I was like, Mom, you need to chill!” Melton laughs, “No, I joke. I’m just happy that I get to share things with my mom. It wasn’t hard for her. She was a natural. My mom’s the funniest person in the world, just with her physical comedy and her timing.”

Family, especially now that his nuclear family is growing, is priority one for Melton. “I feel like I’m pretty private with my circle of loved ones. I got my places that I go to, a 7/11 that I go to all the time, my Handles Coffee across the street from the Vista theater in Silver Lake. I’m there all the time.” I point out that he might have blown up his favorite coffee shop but he’s encouraging, “People should go there! The coffee is great!” That’s the kind of person Charles Melton is, willing to share the light he so easily conjures, either with his co-stars, his favorite coffee shop, or the person interviewing him. I had to ask, if Riverdale was Melton’s Julliard, what then would Beef be to Melton? Melton treats me to his signature smile, “Beef is me coming home.”

groomer CANDICE BIRNS USING IS CLINICAL AND STMNT AT FORWARD ARTISTS
set design BRITTANY PORTER AT ARTISTRY
lighting director GUSTAVO SORIANO
digital technician ZACH CALLAHAN
styling assistant AALIYAH DALY, AARON DEITZ
production THE MORRISON GROUP
production manager CECILIA ALVAREZ BLACKWELL
production assistant JORDAN MACK
location THE DREAM FACTORY LA
video director & DP ROBERT MARRERO
video assistant director COLE MAGRINI

Via: I-D