The Bear actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach: ‘It was hot. There were real knives, real flames’

Ebon Moss-Bachrach may not be “The Bear” in Hulu’s hit kitchen-based TV drama of that name, but he has made a name for himself playing a character that’s both aggressive and endangered. His performance as the irascible and increasingly sidelined restaurant manager Richie (loud-mouthed foil to Jeremy Allen White’s terse chef Carmy) has deservedly been hailed as one of the highlights of a superlative show, now returning for a second season. Both Moss-Bachrach and The Bear were nominated for Emmy awards this week.

It is the high point in the American actor’s career to date. Until last year, his filmography largely comprised small if memorable turns in shows such as HBO’s Girls and John Adams and a regular part in little-loved Marvel series The Punisher. But in 2022, at the age of 45, he made a belated breakthrough: first came a role in the acclaimed Elizabeth Holmes bio-series The Dropout, then came The Bear, then a multi-episode arc as a rogue among rebels in Star Wars spin-off series Andor. Yet more than a sense of having finally “arrived”, what he felt was simply relief and gratitude to be working. “I know my job is very . . . tenuous,” he says with distinctly un-Richie-like humility when we speak via Zoom. 

That was especially true during the pandemic, when countless projects were hampered by set closures and restrictions. But this, Moss-Bachrach observes, actually fed into The Bear’s immense, unexpected success. “Shows had to be rewritten because you couldn’t have a lot of people in them, so even in the TV we were consuming we felt a distance. The Bear had people spitting and sweating and bleeding on each other,” he says. “It was completely anathema to the isolation that all of us had been living and very intimate in a way that we hadn’t been for a long time.”    

Thus a small-scale, claustrophobic series about the harried staff of a Chicago sandwich joint briefly became the most streamed show in the US. The show — in which both dishes and emotions are constantly boiling over — can make for an anxiety-inducing watch. What, I ask, was it like being on the set?

“It was hot. There were real knives, real flames, but truthfully a lot of that tension and build is done in post-production. They did a really good job with layering in music and with the freneticism of the cutting. Honestly, it was a relief I didn’t have to do a lot of cooking because that was a source of great stress for the others.”

While the rest of the cast prepared for their parts by shadowing renowned chefs, Moss-Bachrach says he got into character as the culinarily unskilled, emotionally unstable Richie by hanging out in Chicago dive bars. Given his own background as a Columbia University-educated, Brooklyn-based, bread-making father-of-two, I ask what resonated with him about someone who is so much the product of the mean streets. “Richie made a lot of sense to me,” he says. “Maybe it’s because I’m 46, but I connected with a man whose world was changing a lot and who felt like he didn’t recognise the city he’s known all his life. The sense of erosion and loss seemed compelling.” 

Richie’s gnawing feeling of superfluousness — in the restaurant where his precious “system” has been overhauled; in his personal life as a divorced dad distanced from his daughter; even in his rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood — are integral to the quiet undercurrent of tragedy that belies the show’s clammy, clamorous tone. Yet despite thoughtfully tackling themes such as grief and male mental health, The Bear is often billed as a comedy. Not least at the Golden Globes, where it was nominated for Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy earlier this year. Does this mis-sell the series?

“Watching it back, it’s not as funny as I thought it would be on the page, but there’s a nice commonality where tragedy and comedy hold hands,” he says before citing a standout scene in which Richie and Carmy have a feeble fist-fight atop an inflatable promotional hot dog. “That’s not played for a laugh. It’s funny because it’s absurd.” 

For all its absurdity, the show has provoked much commentary about its depiction of “toxic masculinity”. But Moss-Bachrach finds such issue-led interpretations too reductive. “To me the show is successful because all these people feel real and completely understandable,” he says. “Life is more complicated than labelling people a ‘villain’ or ‘toxic’. That’s not realistic or helpful. I think it’s great that a character like Richie is on TV and it’s great to show his weakness and try to figure him out.”  

At the end of the first season, Richie seems on the cusp of figuring himself out as he embraces open vulnerability in lieu of belligerent defensiveness. Although Moss-Bachrach remains tight-lipped about what the second season has in store, with the shabby eatery set to be transformed into an elevated dining establishment, he does dash any hopes about Richie’s continued self-improvement. “It doesn’t seem like he finds his bliss,” he teases. “All of these people in the show are a long way away from any point of happiness or getting out of their own way.”

He is, however, more optimistic about the series itself, and how its popularity points to a move away from the current paradigm of ever-bigger-budget TV. “This is a very small show about people that’s mainly just acting, writing and directing,” he says. “There’s no concept or genre stuff. There’s no sex. It seems like a return to something very basic and true and I don’t think people ever get tired of that.”

Season 2 of ‘The Bear’ is on Disney+ in the UK from July 19 and on Hulu in the US now