Quicker than you can say “cousin”, 10-time Emmy Award-winning hit The Bear is back for a third season. At a press conference attended by Broadsheet, the cast of The Bear shared what we can expect for the new season and how their experience has changed them personally.
There are mild spoilers for the first half of season three (and seasons one and two) below.
Since the first season, showrunner Christopher Storer has made bold and brave moves, including an episode filmed in an 18-minute single take and a double-length Christmas episode that caused blood pressure spikes globally. He’s shaking things up once again by opening his third season with a 37-minute montage – co-written by Canadian chef Matty Matheson, who is one of the show’s producers and also plays enigmatic handyman Neil Fak. The episode charts Carmy’s career from Noma (with scenes shot on location in Copenhagen) to the French Laundry and fictional restaurants run by the expertly cast Olivia Colman and Joel McHale.
“I think a lot of people that have had amazing careers, like Carmy, have worked under a lot of chefs,” said Matheson at the press conference. “There are little pieces that you grab onto throughout your life, and that’s how and what makes you who you are, the good and the bad. In culinary school, I had this chef that told us a story about how 30 chefs made who he was … We wanted to tell a story of how Carmy was built in that way.”
The show returns to its central timeline in episode two. Carmy reverts back to the ball of angst and anxiety we saw at the end of season two (when he gets locked in the freezer). And, as we know from the trailer for this season, he wants a Michelin star and he’s making everyone stressed.
As Jeremy Allen White put it: “Carmy is continuing to do what he does best ,which is [to] be incredibly avoidant of all the issues that he has going on.” He has a list of non-negotiables, and so does Richie. Nat is seven months pregnant and trying to keep a restaurant open while her brother spends thousands on microgreens and goes deeper into debt to their (slightly shady) “uncle” (played by a scene-stealing Oliver Platt). The Faks continue to provide levity, including a cameo from John Cena as the third Fak. Tina is struggling to adjust to the pace and pressure of fine dining. And Sydney, played by Ayo Edebiri, endeavors to keep things running and to remember why she wanted this in the first place.
“Carmy [is] somebody that I think [Sydney] really has looked up to but now is sort of in the thick of doing business with. And it’s, I think, a lot more chaotic than she might have idealised,” says Edebiri.
And Marcus? He is grieving. The end of season two showed us Marcus’s mother dying.
Edebiri says grief is “one of the connecting threads of the show”.
“It’s even one of the strengths of the show and I think one of the reasons that it’s connected with so many people,” says Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays Richie. “Grief is the river that runs through all of us. And it’s the one sort of – maybe one of the only – common things that we all share in the human experience. And so, yeah, that continues [in the show], and [the characters] deal with it in their own way. Or not.”
This season also reveals another loss: the fine diner run by Colman’s character is closing. It’s a pivotal point for Carmy, who wonders if the goal he’s desperately dragging everyone towards is futile. Is now the right time to open a fine diner?
Echoing real life, The Bear continues to show that hospitality is an incredibly tough business. This is in part thanks to the consulting of Courtney Storer, the show’s culinary producer, and Matheson.
One side benefit to the show is that it’s making the cast – and the viewers – review their roles as patrons. “I have two little kids,” says Abby Elliot, who plays Natalie. “Now when I go to restaurants, I’m constantly thinking about cleaning up after them … It’s stressful because you just know how hard restaurant workers work.”
“That’s the number one thing, I sort of clear my plate alongside them always now and I feel like every server is like, ‘Stop doing that’,” says Edebiri.
“I think all of us probably just have much more interest [and] a hypersensitivity now in restaurants,” says Allen White.
“I try to do a peeping Tom thing into the kitchen, just to see that energy and chaos or whatever – how it’s going,” says Liza Colón-Zayas, who plays Tina.
Stream The Bear season three on Disney Plus.
