On June 4, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2026 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best television series. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind shows well worth toasting. In the days leading up to the Los Angeles event, IndieWire is showcasing their work with new interviews and tributes from their peers.
Ahead, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greg Kwedar tells IndieWire about the one main quality “Beef” star Charles Melton possesses that makes the Perfomance Award recipient an enhancement to every project he works on — like their upcoming Netflix film “Saturn Return.”
I met Charles Melton in the fall of 2024 on the rooftop at the London Hotel in Los Angeles, coming directly off a plane, and only minutes before a screening downstairs of our film “Sing Sing,” to talk about the possibility of working together on my next film, “Saturn Return.”
On my flight that morning, I rewatched an interview he did seated between his parents for “CBS Sunday Morning,” when he was promoting “May December.” His performance in that film had stayed with me since I had seen it. He was, to put it simply, a revelation in that movie. The kind of performance where the rest of the film fell away for me, and I watched transfixed as he grappled with a sea of feeling inside of him. In the interview, his father spoke of his time away from his family serving the country in the Army, and the toll it took on him, and the expectation on young Charles to look after his sisters and mother.
I saw something in Charles in that interview that I asked him that day on the roof: “Was something happening for you there as your dad spoke?” Charles looked at me, and suddenly he was back there, really back there, and he said he was looking at his father, and that in his mind he was saying, “Dad, why did it take this long for you to say this, on national TV?” And then he was also saying to him, with his eyes, “It’s OK, Dad, I’m OK, Dad, we’re Ok, Dad.” And then the spell broke and Charles and I were together again, tears in our eyes. We left that meeting resolved to make “Saturn Return” together, no matter what. And It wasn’t the only time in knowing him that we’ve cried over fathers.
Charles’ ascendancy as an actor has continued with work in “Warfare,” and now with his delightful turn in “Beef,” where he travels from a naive dreamer to a cunning striver. In everything I watch of his I see an actor willing to leap into roles with a full-throated commitment to the characters he portrays. But there is another quality that I got to experience first-hand that will serve him through his career, that I’m confident will only deepen and expand with time.
It’s his generosity.
Charles is a person who would gladly give you the shirt off his back. He delights in surprising the people he cares about with gifts, or will swipe the check for a meal on his way to the bathroom, or will watch you closely to see if you’re enjoying the meal he’s cooked from scratch for you.
But this generosity extends to his performances. It is in the way he will give himself over to the process, to try any idea in a take no matter how unexpected and wild, or delicate and nuanced. He wants to find the truth with you. And he wants the very best for the work itself. He will make himself big or small if it means that together we can all win. He makes the company stronger, healthier, and kinder. He gives gratitude to every hand on a set, no matter the size of the job. He was truly beloved by our cast and crew, and I venture to say his soul shined on our set, it certainly shines through his performance. The world is a better place with Charles in it, and so is cinema.
“Beef” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
