"I’m a little fried,” Ebon Moss-Bachrach says, slightly apologetically, on a Zoom call from Chicago. It is late February, and the American actor has been up all night filming for the second, much-anticipated season of hit dramedy The Bear. Anyone who has watched the TV show — one of the most acclaimed of last year — will know why: each expletive-filled episode, charting the euphoric ups and disastrous downs of a neighbourhood sandwich shop, was stuffed with screaming matches, kitchen meltdowns and flashes of violence. In one episode, Moss-Bachrach’s character is stabbed in the butt. No wonder he is frazzled.
The Bear centres on Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a chef with big ideas and bigger arms, who takes over his dead brother’s restaurant in Chicago’s River North area. Moss-Bachrach, 46, plays Richie, the loud-mouthed manager known to Carmy as “cousin”, but while that nickname denotes a familial closeness, the two men are constantly in opposition. Carmy, who trained at The French Laundry and Noma, dreams of haute cuisine; Richie is, let’s just say, a little rougher around the edges (in one episode, it’s revealed he’s kept the restaurant afloat by selling coke out the back). But, says Moss-Bachrach, he means well: “Richie is all heart. There’s so much uncensored feeling there.”
Before filming The Bear again, Moss-Bachrach — who grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and now lives in New York with his wife, the Ukrainian photographer Yelena Yemchuk, and their two daughters — hung out for a few weeks in Chicago, which he affectionately describes as “a loud town” with a “lot of cultural volume”. That on-the-ground preparation was necessary, because if you’re going to make a show about a chef in Chicago, there are two groups you’re certain to hear from a lot: chefs, and people from Chicago. “To come here and make something so deeply about the town as an outsider, and then to come back and feel very welcomed by the city — I don’t know what more you can ask for,” he says. “I go to a restaurant, and I get sent a lot of drinks that I can’t possibly drink.” (Also, a lot of people call him “cousin”.)
Last year was a busy one in general for the actor. He starred as journalist John Carreyrou in the Elizabeth Holmes drama The Dropout and the slippery Arvel Skeen in Star Wars spin-off Andor. This summer, as well as the return of The Bear, he will appear in No Hard Feelings alongside Jennifer Lawrence. The film, directed by Bad Teacher producer Gene Stupnitsky, looks like a rowdy, raucous comedy, the kind that’s been absent from Hollywood for too long. Moss-Bachrach confirms that it’s “goofy”, with a Farrelly brothers influence. He’s reluctant to give anything away, except to say that his character is a “pretty sensitive dude”.
Though Moss-Bachrach is sometimes hesitant to talk about his own work — he’s much more enthusiastic discussing books he’s recently read (lots of Murakami) and films he’s watched (Decision to Leave) — the actor is clearly proud of The Bear. It’s one of the few television shows that he’s watched back. “Mostly I don’t, because I had my experience making it, and it gets complicated watching it,” he says. “I end up feeling powerless, sort of disenfranchised.” He hasn’t watched The Dropout or Andor, for example. Though that’s mostly not to taint his memories of the set — “I love that experience of being in the stew and making it” — it’s also to avoid second-guessing his performance. “I’ve worked on great scripts that have turned into shitty movies,” he says, “and I’ve shot shitty scripts that have turned into really good stuff.”
Speaking of really good stuff: if you’re not yet caught up on The Bear, there’s a good chance that you saw him in Lena Dunham’s Girls, in which he played the skeezy, guitar-playing Desi Harperin, who pairs up with the Type-A, self-destructive Marnie (Allison Williams). He was only supposed to appear in a few episodes, but the writers “were charmed by the disaster that was Desi,” he says, and upgraded him to a series regular. Desi became one of the most memorable roles in a show filled with memorable roles — manipulative, charming and maddening all at once. Now, Moss-Bachrach is slightly nervous about whether his daughters, aged 12 and 16, will watch the series (given what a touchstone that show has become, they definitely will).
Will Richie in The Bear have the same staying power as Desi in Girls? They do have some overlap. “A lot of the characters that I’ve played, people say are douchebags or assholes,” Moss-Bachrach says, almost hurt on their behalf. “I’m very intimate with these characters, so I’m not a fair judge.” The appeal of those roles, with their loud opinions and explosive temperaments, lies in the actor’s timidity. “In my own life, I’m shy, and I like to play people who don’t withhold,” he explains. “That sort of expression and lack of self-censorship triggers a lot of people.” They’re also, he points out, very fun to portray. “They’re babies. I play a lot of babies.”
Right now he’s gathering himself for The Bear’s return in June, and with it the intensity of being in a zeitgeisty show that scooped up numerous accolades, including a Critics Choice Award and a Golden Globe (Moss-Bachrach was nominated for the best supporting role at the Independent Spirit Awards, though lost out to his castmate Ayo Edebiri, who plays volatile sous-chef Sydney). “Before, we were making something that felt like we were a little group project, which was secret,” he says, “and now there’s obviously a lot of light shining on us, which we’re super grateful for, but with that definitely comes some stakes.”
What can we expect from The Bear’s second outing? According to Moss-Bachrach, “it’s a little more quiet than the last, maybe a bit more reflective.” At the end of the first season, Carmy closes the sandwich shop, grandly named the Original Beef of Chicagoland, and creates a new venture called The Bear. The second season is “transitional,” Moss-Bachrach says, as the team builds a new, hopefully more functional restaurant. Does that mean no more attractive, hot-headed people slugging it out over tomato sauce? Don’t worry, he says, stress will never be too far away: “If everything feels peaceful and, like, ‘kumbaya’, it’s probably a bad sign.” ○
‘The Bear’ returns to Disney+ on 22 June
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
