How ‘The Bear’ Cast Cooked Up Another Classic Season of TV

As we prepare for the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards, Backstage is breaking down this year’s film and television ensemble nominees for your consideration. 

Main cast: Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Matty Matheson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ricky Staffieri, Jeremy Allen White
Casting by: Jeanie Bacharach and Maggie Bacharach
Created By: Christopher Storer
Distributed by: FX

Every player in the celebrated ensemble of Christopher Storer’s kitchen dramedy knows exactly when to say, “Yes, chef.”

Just like his character, Jeremy Allen White sets the menu as executive chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto. The key ingredient in the show’s secret sauce is the actor’s sharply drawn portrait of a cuisine-obsessed man who’s always running from himself; he imbues the character with equal parts charisma and cluelessness.

When Carmy first returned to his Chicago hometown to take over his family’s sandwich shop after the death of his brother, he brought both a demand for kitchen excellence and a stubborn inability to cope with the loss. The high standards he held himself to made the other characters raise their game, too. On the third season, though, Carmy’s unprocessed trauma threatens to ruin everything.

On the second episode, he causes an uproar when he presents the staff at his new fine-dining restaurant with a list of “nonnegotiables” stemming from his monomaniacal drive to be the best. As he draws up the list, White projects the same steely focus he brings to scenes of Carmy cooking exquisite dishes. 

When Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney Adamu first started working for Carmy, she saw him as a hero. (Edebiri beautifully portrays this admiration in a flashback to before they met, as she rapturously digs into a dish he cooked at a restaurant in New York City.) Even with a business partnership now in the mix, Sydney is all nervous glances and deliberately chosen words in response to Carmy’s outbursts—born from a desire to keep the kitchen running smoothly, yes, but likely out of lingering deference, too. Before long, his continued bad behavior—and a tantalizing job offer—casts a cloud of resentment and doubt across Edebiri’s face. 

Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Richard “Richie” Jerimovich, meanwhile, represents the history that Carmy is always trying to escape. The Berzattos’ “cousin” has grown a lot over the series, and viewers see plenty of that mellower, professional side on Season 3. But sometimes Moss-Bachrach lets the old Richie slip out. His ongoing (and perhaps justified) tantrum over Carmy’s insults matches his cousin’s aggression in a familiar—and familial—way. It leads the viewer to wonder how much these people can really change.

Liza Colón-Zayas’ sous-chef Tina Marrero shares a touching relationship with Sydney in the kitchen. She gets her moment in the spotlight on Episode 6, “Napkins,” which digs into Tina’s life before she started working for the Original Beef. Over the course of a humiliating job search, she goes from determined to vulnerable, culminating in a soul-bearing monologue that the actor delivers beautifully.

Restaurant manager Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto (Abby Elliott) soothes or lovingly prods the knuckleheads around her with all the sweetness the nickname implies. But when the situation calls for it, she adopts an aggressive tone that’s full of vinegar. Elliott aces an acting endurance test in “Ice Chips,” a two-hander episode opposite Jamie Lee Curtis as her emotionally volatile mother, Donna. Elliott juggles her scene partner’s neuroses even as Natalie endures wave after wave of labor pains.

Though the staff at the Bear (the restaurant) might drop more than a few plates, the cast members of “The Bear” (the show) serve their delicacies hot every time.