Kerry Nolan: It's All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Alison Stewart. Last summer, Hulu's original series The Bear became a surprise hit, winning a Writers Guild Award for Best Comedy Series, a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best New Scripted Series, and it's since been renewed for a second season, which Hulu just announced will return in June. Now, The Bear is about a renowned high-end chef named Carmen Carmy Berzatto, who returns home to run the not-so-high-end but beloved original beef of Chicagoland sandwich shop after his brother's death.

It turns out that the restaurant which opens to a line out the door every day has been run in chaotic fashion, and Carmy is tasked with not only keeping the restaurant alive but getting it organized. However, Carmy is a little rough around the edges and has to figure out a way to earn the respect of his late brother's loyal staff. The Bear is at once a study of family, friendships, survival, community, and of course, food filled in a gritty verity style. Some of the shots of food are some of the series' most beautiful from sizzling steak on a grill, to an ode to making donuts. It's tense and fast.

As a viewer, you really get a sense of being thrown into the kitchen, the way Carmy has. Jeremy Allen White, who spent 11 seasons as Phillip Lip Gallagher on Shameless, won a Critics Choice Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe for his role as Chef Carmy. I got a chance to speak with him about the show after its release last summer. The first question I asked him was about the ingredients of the script that enticed him to take on the project. Let's listen to part of my conversation with Jeremy Allen White.

Jeremy: When I first read the script, my heart really broke for Carmy. I found him to be an incredibly lonely, young man. I think that was because his sense of identity is so wrapped up in being a chef and his performance as a chef and his success. Everything immediately felt so life or death for Carmy. The stakes always seemed really high. I think you're right. Carmy really has a one-track mind. He doesn't have time for things like maybe bathing or washing his hair or sleeping even. He's always moving forward.

Kerry: The flashbacks to the high-end restaurants were heartbreaking. Just how you watch how he internalizes the really negative feedback that he gets from the executive chef.

Jeremy: Yes, the interesting thing about the show and what we really wanted to touch upon in some bigger themes is how the kitchen industry, service industry like all industries have been changing a lot in the last couple of years. Carmy came through the industry at a time when it was far more hostile and abusive but that's how he learned and that's how he believes that he became so good. Now that he's in charge of this greasy spoon, he's trying to balance what he was taught or how he was taught and he's trying to learn how to teach now.

Kerry: That goes to how he refers to everyone even the lowest line cook as chef.

Jeremy: Chef, yes.

Kerry: That respect seems very, very important to Carmy.

Jeremy: Yes, he needs the respect. The brigade system is what he implements at a certain point but to set the building blocks properly, to really change this restaurant it has to start with a certain amount of respect. That's the beginning.

Kerry: A young chef named Sydney's hired to help run the restaurant with Carmy and we see her tested over and over and over, whether it's from Carmy or Richie or some of the loyalists to Michael, Carmy's late brother. Can you talk a little bit about the chemistry between Sydney and Carmy? What do they give each other and why do they come to loggerheads?

Jeremy: I can speak to what we were just speaking about respect. They have an instant amount of respect for one another because they think they went through a similar schooling nobody else has. There's an immediate vulnerability and understanding of one another, which is why their bond is immediately quite strong. They have a lot of conflict in their-- their mission is the same, but the paths that they are choosing to take differ. I think that Carmy is the chef. I think where he learned, Chef is boss, Chef is God as far as Carmy is concerned.

Sydney challenges that idea. She thinks it's a little bit too extreme, which I, Jeremy, have to agree it is, but that's the way that Carmy operates. There's a lot of conflict and pushing and pulling that comes from her respecting this system that's in place and that Carmy wants to implement, but also thinking perhaps it takes itself a little bit too seriously.

Kerry: We're talking with Jeremy Allen White, who plays Carmy lead actor on The Bear. It's on Hulu. I cannot tell you how obsessed with this show I am and I really encourage everyone to watch it. The other prominent relationship in the show was the one between Carmy and Richie, who was his late brother's best friend and who he calls his cousin. Those two do a lot of yelling. What does the actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach bring to Richie that's special aside from that flat-out great Chicago accent.

Jeremy: Ebon is really amazing in a lot of ways. What I found myself usually most impressed by is, he's incredibly loose and improvisational. That's just him as an actor but it lends itself so well to Richie and especially in scenes with Richie and Carmy because I think Carmy is so incredibly tightly wound all the time. He's this pressure cooker. To be met with this looseness, I don't want to say lightness but Ebon is an incredibly loose performer and wickedly funny, too. The characters bounce well off one another because they're opposites in a lot of ways.

Kerry: Now, you're a native New Yorker. How did you manage to incorporate that slant A Chicago accent?

Jeremy: I talked to Chris Storer, who's our showrunner and we discussed accents. Him and Ebon had made the choice that Richie is incredibly proud of where he came from and incredibly proud of his accent. Maybe he even puts on the accent a little heavy at times because he's so prideful about the city where he grew up. Carmy has been running away. Long before his brother passed, he's been running away from the place that he grew up, his family, his sister, his brother. We didn't want Carmy to have too much of an accent.

Maybe he tried to lose it at some point when he was working another fine dining all over the country and the world, but I thought it was important and then Chris thought it too that perhaps when Richie and Carmy were arguing or they were getting a little bit loud, that Carmy could regress and slip into it a little bit and mimic Richie-som. That was my goal is to touch upon a couple of things when Carmy and Richie were getting a little bit heated with one another.

Kerry: The neighborhood itself and the Midwestern Chicagoness of it almost feels like a character in itself. How would you describe The Bears Chicago?

Jeremy: The Bears Chicago, I've spent a lot of time in Chicago over the years and I think what strikes me most about the people there is their pride. I think it's what I just mentioned with Richie as well, he's incredibly prideful. It's exciting. I did a show for a long time. We spent a lot of time in Chicago. I got to understand one version of Chicago through the lens of my character on that show and the world of the show Shameless that I did for a long time. It was really exciting to come back with a different lens because I really feel like I found a different world, and not just in the dining experiences and the cuisines because that's something I was really exploring. I feel like I learned a lot from Chris Storer, the creator of the show, who grew up in Chicago, his sister Courtney Storer, who's a wonderful chef, lives in Los Angeles now, a chef at Jon & Vinny's for a long time in Los Angeles. I felt like I met a lot of characters through them. I grew to understand the city in a different way through Courtney and Chris as well.

Kerry: The show itself is filmed at a pace that certainly for me just drew me in and kept me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to read an excerpt from a Vulture review that sums it up says, "The Bear does not bother to explain its restaurant lingo. Immediately layout character backstories or even establish itself firmly as a comedy or drama. There is no time. You want to exposition, go watch Stranger Things so you can have the upside-down explain to you for the fifth time. Dinner service starts in 20 minutes and Carmy and his coworkers have sandwiches to make." Does that sound accurate to you?

Jerry: Yes, it was something that Chris and I discussed quite a bit before shooting the pilot. I think I was even a little bit concerned about the lack of information. Chris really believed in it and believed in, I think, us as the performers and the world that he was creating. I think he was able to create a world that people wanted to spend time in even if they didn't understand it immediately. It was a real goal of his in the pilot to really just plop audiences into the world.

Don't explain too much and hopefully, audiences will connect enough with whatever they can understand about the characters and they'll want to exist in the world. They'll be intrigued enough to take the ride. I think he was successful. It's really special.

Kerry: We've got a clip from the show, one of the clips that we didn't have to bleep too much out of. Man, let's play it now.

Richie: Listen, you got to run this stuff by me first.

Carmy: I don't have to do.

Richie: Hold on. Wait, listen, let's just have a conversation for a second. Whoa, who is this?

Sydney: This is Sydney. I'm starting today.

Richie: You're what in today?

Carmy: That's Sydney. She's helping us out today.

Richie: Cousin, you're ordering different mayonnaise, bro?

Sydney: What's with his bananas?

Carmy: No, all you chef.

Richie: Yes, all you chef this beef, he was using him to make a giant knuckle.

Carmy: That was a play on a panettone. It would've been beautiful if you let me finish. [crosstalk]

Richie: Richie Jerimovich, pleasure to meet you, sweetheart.

Carmy: Say sweetheart, you--

Richie: Sorry, Carmy. You're so woke. I made nothing by it. Sydney saying sweetheart's just part of our Italian heritage.

Sydney: That's beautiful. Thank you.

Richie: Listen, I'm trying to talk to you. Okay? Don't be rude and start doing a million things like I'm smart ass.

Carmy: I don't have time for this right now.

Richie: You don't ever have any time to take care of your mom for six months.

Carmy: Don't you fucking start.

Richie: You fucking-- I got all kinds of receipts from my divorce lawyer, banking up because all the time I'm spent trying to put your family back together because you're too much of [bleep] to come home. The guys are texting me. You're telling them to do all sorts of weird backwards. Don't do that, Carmy. Don't go messing with our heads and order in different mayonnaise and hire a new bros without talking to me first. This is your brother's house. Okay? Yes? Remember? I was running it fine without you.

Richie: Why didn't he leave it to you then?

Speaker 1: We're out of olive oil, Carmy.

Kerry: That was such a great example of ensemble work. You're not a stranger to ensemble cast work. How important is the chemistry of the particular cast? Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what it's like to work with these folks.

Jerry: It's the most important. We had a wonderful casting director Jeanie Bacharach, and Chris and Jo who put us all together. I'm not sure the science that goes into that, but they did a great job. It all seemed really easy. I think there was something really nice that Ayo and I were able to do which is as soon as we signed on to the project, they sent Ayo and I to culinary school. That was the first time I met Ayo, it was in a kitchen. We spent two weeks together every day for about eight hours a day.

Really got to know one another while learning to cook which I think was a really wonderful experience because I think so much of the show is about how these people aren't the best communicators. I'll speak at least for Carmy. I think the way that Carmy finds that he is able to communicate and even be vulnerable at times is through food and through his cooking. I think that was really wonderful and lent itself to Carmy and Syd's relationship. With Ebon, I think he's so gifted.

I think we both understood the world and we were playing in the same world and it just really worked and everybody else, Liza does such beautiful work. She plays Tina, Lionel who plays Marcus. I just think top to bottom, we're just really lucky and we could really hold each other up and give each other moments to really shine.

Kerry: You were on Shameless for 11 years which is a really long time and not something that we see a whole lot of these days. How does it feel to be part of something that people really love again?

Jeremy: It's really, honestly, overwhelming in a positive way. When I finished Shameless like you said, I did it for 11 years, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do next. I thought maybe I'd take a break from television and just do some little movies and try to disappear for a while. Then I started talking to Chris about The Bear and I read the script and it was just so beautiful and I found the character of Carmy so heartbreaking and beautiful. I'm not in a position in my career where I can pass up something that good.

I did it and I feel lucky. I feel like I struggled twice. I'm feeling very grateful for both experiences.

Kerry: That was part of my conversation with Jeremy Allen White about his role as Carmy on The Bear streaming on Hulu. That is All Of It. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Kerry Nolan. I've been in for Alison Stewart and we'll catch you next time.

 

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