Suppose they gave a press conference and everyone had to watch their tongue for fear or revealing too much? That was the dilemma facing the cast of “The Bear” in advance of the Season 3 launch (coming up on Wednesday) during a virtual media event over Zoom on Monday, when questions from the various writers and editors were often met with a snicker or a shrug or – most often – a declaration along the lines of, “I can’t really say. Just watch and find out.”
The FX show that won 10 Emmys in January for its first season (including Best Comedy Series) and is widely expected to be the most-nominated comedy for Season 2 when bids are revealed on July 17 gathered eight of its players to whet the appetite of viewers in advance of the 10 episodes of Season 3 dropping en masse on Hulu later this week. Those attending included Emmy winners Jeremy Allen White (Carmy Berzatto), Ayo Edebiri (Sydney) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Richie) along with Lionel Boyce (Marcus), Liza Colón-Zayas (Tina), Abby Elliott (Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto), Matty Matheson (Neil as well as an executive producer) and Ricky Staffieri (Ted).
In general, the gathered castmates found it challenging to at once promote the new season and make sure nothing of real substance in the storyline slipped through. For instance, when a journalist asked what “non-negotiables” they carried in their work on the show, Edebiri began, “Be nice to each other. Learn your lines.” Matheson added, “Show up on time.” Elliott chimed in with, “Stay hydrated. Take Vitamin C.”
More specifically, White was asked how his getting stuck inside the restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator at the end of Season 2 would be impacting his alter ego Carmy heading into the new campaign. “What happens? Well, I do get out of the walk-in refrigerator and that’s good. And then I think Carmy does what he does, which is he sort of buries himself back into his work and really tries to challenge himself. And in doing so, it really challenges everybody around him and I think becomes quite challenging to be around.”
Tying into the tone of the event, one media member asked the individual cast members if they might describe the coming season in a sentence, word or simple adjective, as that hopefully wouldn’t spoil anything.
“‘Elevation’ I think is a good word,” Staffieri replied.
“I would say ‘precision’,” Boyce added.
“Challenges,” White noted.
“Razzle-dazzle,” Boyce offered.
“Is this helpful or hurtful?” Elliott wondered.
“Both,” the writer admitted.
The actors were more relaxed answering general questions and pushing off those that were more specific. One journalist brought up the subject of awards and how being so successful impacts each of them personally. “I mean, I think we were very fortunate, and it was very beautiful and very exciting,” Edebiri emphasized, “but I don’t think we make this with that in mind. And I think the chips will fall where they may, but I’m really proud of the work that we all continue to do.”
“I think what’s really nice,” White added, “and we talked a lot about this kind of going from Season 1 to Season 2, is we were really curious if we’d be able to find our own little bubble again after the first season had the success that it did. We were able to make Season 1 without any expectations whatsoever, and we were a little bit uncertain if we’d be able to kind of find that place again. And I think we did in Season 2. And then I think that any of those feelings were kind of magnified after Season 2. And then again, I think we were able to kind of find that creative space with each other very separate from all of the other things, which I think we’re really lucky to be able to do over and over again.”
Translation: the show will probably cart off armloads of Emmys again.
One questioner wanted to know if the darkness of the show ever stayed with the actors and they took it home with them or were able to easily shake it off.
“I think on our show, it’s almost impossible to take that stuff home,” White said. “We’ve said it before, and we’ll continue to say it, but the set is such a joyful place. Everybody does care for each other so much. Everybody does laugh so frequently that even if you have to go to sort of a dark place in the morning, two hours later you’ll be hanging out and watching a scene and really laughing and enjoying the company. So I don;t know, for me, even if I tried to take it home, I think it would be hard.”
Edebiri agreed. “The show does have those moments, but it also has very light moments too,” she said. “Very beautiful moments, too. I think I take that with me more.”
“Also, you can find laughter in grief,” Moss-Bachrach noted. “I think this show has all of that. It overflows with all of these kinds of spectrums of behavior. And it also doesn’t behoove us to sort of live in that kind of heaviness, because it’s a very intense shoot. We were there for probably four months, I think, something like that, and you can’t maintain that for the whole time. You’d run out of energy. So we have to sort of protect it, leave it there, rest, and then come back and pick it back up.”
That said, the breakout success of “The Bear” puts added pressure on everyone’s shoulders, White believes.
“I mean, yeah, the pressure is very real,” he admitted. “I think prior to shooting Season 2 and especially Season 3, we’d just kind of come off the success of awards season, and I was very anxious. I knew the scripts were so strong and we had great opportunities, like we always do. So that pressure is real. But then after a couple of weeks of getting back around these guys and our beautiful crew, everything kind of falls back into place and it feels fun again and it all feels possible again.”
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