What Do Charles Melton And Cailee Spaeny Beef About? Football And Letterboxd

Glenn Close is not going to beryllium ignored this clip around, arsenic nan eight-time Oscar nominee will finally person nickname from nan academy this fall.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for nan Los Angeles Times and big of The Envelope newsletter, moving up a patient World Cup fever moreover if it’s conscionable an excuse to head to Lucky Baldwin’s for a pint aliases two and watch Cristiano Ronaldo 1 past time.

But let’s circle backmost to American shot and my integer screen communicative pinch “Beef” stars Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton, who watched a Super Bowl together, though they were cheering for different teams.

That Super Bowl successful mobility was Super Bowl LIX, pitting nan Philadelphia Eagles against nan Kansas City Chiefs. Melton hosted a watch party, and since he considers Kansas location and played shot for Kansas State University, you mightiness deliberation he’d beryllium rooting for nan Chiefs.

Nope.

“When I was surviving successful Germany, I fell successful emotion pinch Donovan McNabb,” Melton, an service brat, tells me, name-checking nan longtime Eagles quarterback.

Spaeny, it turns out, was nan only Chiefs instrumentality astatine nan party. To participate Melton’s home, she had to measurement connected a doormat that was fitted pinch a red-and-white Chiefs jersey. (“It sewage existent dirty,” Melton says pinch pride.)

Melton and Spaeny bask a relaxed and playful give-and-take, borne from nan months they spent preparing to play Austin and Ashley, a Gen-Z mates moving astatine a Montecito state club, dreaming and scheming toward upward mobility successful “Beef.”

(Erik Carter / For The Times)

The astir memorable section they shared recovered nan mates successful an overcrowded, ninth-circle-of-hell emergency room pinch Ashley, uninsured, experiencing terrible ovarian torsion. Her concerns are dismissed and she begs for personification to prevention her.

“Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-common experience,” Spaeny says. “I astir apt person a speech erstwhile a period pinch female friends who spell to nan doctor’s agency and are gaslit by nan system, conscionable being made to consciousness for illustration what they’re experiencing isn’t really happening aliases they’re making it up. It’s scary.”

Still, being “Beef,” nan section has its stock of mordant humor, for illustration nan segment wherever a caregiver asks Ashley to complaint her pain, zero being pain-free and 10 being excruciating.

“Oh, I thought it was for illustration Letterboxd,” Ashley replies, referring to nan movie reappraisal societal platform. “Two-and-a-half stars retired of 5 is average.”

“My full life I’ve been a six aliases seven,” Melton says, noting his ain individual symptom scale. “I’ll person a acold and I’ll beryllium like, ‘Six aliases seven.’”

“That sounds for illustration you,” Spaeny says.

“I tin get beautiful dramatic,” Melton says. “It’s really for illustration nan extremity of nan world erstwhile I’m sick.”

Spaeny deleted her Letterboxd relationship because she gets anxious astir thing online containing reviews.

“It takes 2 buttons to click connected a movie that I’ve been successful and spot what group opportunity astir me,” Spaeny says. “So I forgot my password and near it that way.”

Melton is an enthusiastic adopter and says he has doubly shared his 4 favourite films, a characteristic wherever actors, usually connected nan reddish carpet, database a quartet of beloved movies. (Here’s one astatine nan “May December” premiere wherever Melton enthuses complete “The Matrix,” “In nan Mood for Love,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Persona.”)

“I saw them astatine different arena and they were like, ‘Charles, truthful bully to spot you.’ And I was like, ‘Do you want my 4 favourite films?’ And they said, ‘No, you’ve already done it enough,’” Melton laughs. “What tin I say? I emotion movies!”