‘Beef’ Casting Director Jeanie Bacharach On The Importance Of Human Observation

Lee Sung Jin’s celebrated series Beef returned earlier in the year to rave reviews and has garnered 16 Emmy Nominations. An anthology series with biting social satire that delves into topics that most mainstream shows avoid. This season featured Oscar Issac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny as two feuding couples with the backdrop of an elite country club. The season also features an incredible supporting cast including Youn Yuh-jung (Minari), Song Kang-ho (Parasite), legendary character actor William Fichtner, Mikaela Hoover (Superman), and Matthew Kim, also known as K-Pop star BM. Wrangling this impressive cast was multi-Emmy Award-winning casting director Jeanie Bacharach (The Bear), who had the experience and expertise to populate this world with talented, believable performers. Bacharach recently spoke with Immersive about this rewarding experience.

[This conversation was edited for clarity and context.]

What was it like when you were first brought onto the show?

Sonny and I worked together to assemble the foursome, and then it became my job to kind of build out from there. Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny were already attached before I came on board, and we started exploring from there.

I’m a huge fan of character actors when they do pop up. William Fichtner is great. What names do you either like always putting in the projects or just have in the back of your head…

I have an enormous wishlist of actors I would love to cast in something. I’ve been a huge fan of Bill’s for years and years and years, and, coincidentally, cast him in another show last year as well. That part came out of Sonny and me just talking about the character and what he was looking for in the role of Troy.  Just sharing ideas and talking about what the qualities were that were important for that role. We started with a list, and then all the signs started to point to Bill.

Talk a little bit about some of the other parts. Obviously, Oscar and Carey have rare chemistry.

They had worked together when they were younger. So for these particular characters to have actors who already have a history, who knew each other at a certain point in their lives, and who are now at a different point in their lives in the same way these characters are, that’s just gold.

Absolutely. And the younger couple, I guess one of the things that this show does, it kind of pits generations against each other.

Charles and Cailee are just phenomenal actors. What was important in those two different relationships was to see the young couple at the beginning of their relationship, with their hopes and dreams, versus this couple who have been through it and are struggling to find the love still in there. What life can do to you as you move through it with your partner and where you start and where you end are, I think, from almost everybody different places.

There is youthful energy, exuberance, and innocence when they start, and sadly that gets corrupted by the beefs. Both Cailee and Charles have these kind of just very open, accessible faces and personalities. At the same time, Carey and Oscar bring this history with them. I mean, just what we know of them performance-wise, you’ve seen them kind of grow in their own careers. So you’re bringing sort of the history of having watched them.

Are you always working in a sense? Do you like people-watching and observing behavior?

I love observing people, and how they work, how they move, how they interact with the world. I mean, observing a server, for example, just as a person and in that particular role, of what she’s doing and sort of recording that in my head so that when I have a role that requires that I have that knowledge. Human observation is important for casting, because a lot of times we’re, we’re sort of the first line before a director will work with them. I have an obligation to give an actor direction that speaks to the character’s humanity and how the character may behave. So I have a responsibility to understand human behavior so I can convey it to the actor. I think it’s important, just in general, to have an understanding of other people in the world.

I people-watch all the time, obsessively. It is very fascinating.

It’s really fascinating, and I think it’s important as we become increasingly addicted to technology, we have to get back to seeing human beings as real people. I think I’m always casting in my head to some extent.

Any cool discoveries on this? Anyone you would like to spotlight…

Matthew Kim, who played Woosh, had never acted before. He’s a Korean pop star, so that was really exciting. Seoyeon Jang, who played Eunice, was also someone I was not familiar with before. And that was really exciting too.

Talk more about working with Sonny. I met him at an event; such an impressive guy…

Our initial meeting was supposed to be, like, “do we wanna work together?” I think we spent almost two hours on a Zoom. He’s so thoughtful, so articulate, so insightful, and so smart. I would follow him anywhere, but he’s also so collaborative and so generous about sharing success, sharing ideas, giving credit where credit is due. We would push back with each other with such respect, because we both respected each other so much that we could hear each other without ego or feeling personally attacked. There’s so much give and take and trust that’s involved, and he’s so open that way, which isn’t always the case.

Very cool. What’s your procedure like when you get started? Do you still print stuff and mark it up with a Sharpie?

I’ve tried as best I can to get with technology and things. I think what’s perhaps sort of old-school about me is that if an actor doesn’t have a lot of experience and you’re often casting young people or looking for new talent, I go back to training. I’m always sort of looking at an actor’s training, whether they’ve done theater and how seriously they seem to be taking the craft and their career.

You get a different pedigree from theater.

It’s what I came up in. I get asked this a lot by actors. I don’t have a TikTok account. That’s not to say it doesn’t serve its purpose, and there have been people who’ve been discovered, you know, off of there who are certainly talented. I think having come up in theater, that is always where I’m gonna be, you know, drawn to, and an actor’s training.

I imagine you’ve seen thousands of people. Your bullshitometer is probably pretty high. You could just tell from the way the person walked into the room.

Well, you know, and it’s funny because there’s been this movement towards British actors and Australian actors. Why do so many get cast and not as many Americans or whatever? I think it goes back to this idea that acting is a craft, and it’s something you have to learn, and you have to train. You have to work at it, and you have to pay your dues, as opposed to sort of a more American sensibility of someone saying you have a pretty face, you should be in the movies or in television, and lo and behold, they come out to Hollywood expecting to make it.

Some of them break through. I mean, there’s the whole wave in casting. I’m sure you don’t like this casting off Instagram numbers like, “Oh, this person has three million followers. They must be good.”

Not the way I work. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on things where that has not come into play. I feel very lucky that way.

What was it like being part of season two on this… the afterglow? By the way, congratulations on the nomination.

Thank you very much. I feel so fortunate. I mean, so lucky to not only come on something that was so well received, but to get to tell a whole new story with a whole new cast; that’s the thrill. I feel so honored to be a part of it. I just hope I held up my end of the bargain.

Beef, season two, is streaming on Netflix.