Beef S2: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan used hidden earphones
- By Sarah Brohi -
- Apr 22, 2026
Beef Season 2 stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan made an expensive decision.
The Hollywood stars played the leads in new episodes of the hit Netflix show, playing a couple whose marriage starts to disintegrate after their lives collide with a newly engaged pair (Cailee Spaney and Charles Melton).
During the eight-episode season, there are many scenes of rage and passion, and it’s been revealed that, for certain moments, Isaac and Mulligan listened to music while performing their character beats. However, during editing, these earphones had to be removed and, according to creator Lee Sung Jin, they “cost a fortune to paint out”.
Speaking on a podcast breaking down the first episode, Sung Jin said, “You two were always playing songs as you performed.”
Isaac revealed he initially had one for a scene in which he played a Moog synthesizer, but enjoyed the experience so much he thought he might try to listen to songs that matched the scene he was performing. After telling Mulligan about his plan, she asked for one also.
They both wore earwigs for one particular scene in which their characters passionately kiss. “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 earplugs 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”.
During another scene involving blackmail, the pair were listening to “really chaotic” music by Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard, which Isaac said “added to the tension”.
However, one song that didn’t fit with the rhythm was one suggested by Mulligan, Meat Loaf’s 1993 epic “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. “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’”.