As we saw with the first season of the dramatic success Bear — in addition to the incredibly tense moments and jaw-dropping performances of the lead (and the Golden Globe winner) Jeremy Allen White as classically trained chef Carmen “Carmi” Berzatto, who comes home to his family’s sandwich restaurant in Chicago – this is a show for food lovers. We talk about how the show lovingly shows the cast prepares it, tastes it and serves it. In fact, if you’re not hungry by the end of an episode, it’s only because you ate while watching.
As we prepare for the release of Season 2 FX on Hulu On Thursday, we got to ask the cast who actually had some skills in the kitchen, and they got their chance when they stopped by our press suite during January’s Pasadena Television Critics Association press tour. The cast was leaving for the Windy City shortly after this interview to begin filming Season 2, so details about the new episodes were under wraps.
For Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays Richie Jerimovich, she had to do the opposite of the train for the series’ countless cooking scenes. “I like to cook a lot in my own life, so I had to unlearn,” he told us during the interview. “I had to go back to a time before I could shake the pots and pans.” Other cast members like Ayo Edebiri (Sydney) knew their way around the kitchen but still needed some extra guidance for a sense of realism. “The training was just to get him to a place of natural ability,” she said. “What does it look like when someone has cooked professionally for years?”
Liza Colon-Zayas researched her role as Tina, often hot-headed, following a woman in a real-life restaurant tending to the male workers around her. But the actress also said she now knows how to chop onions properly (and offered to help us with our own skills)!
Also during the conversation, we got to ask Edebiri and co-star Lionel Boyce (Marcus) about the sparks viewers have seen between their characters. Watch the video interview above to see what they had to say, as well as hear from co-stars Abby Elliott (Natalie) and Edwin Lee Gibson (Ebraheim).
BearSeason 2 premieres Thursday, June 22, Hulu