“You don’t need to send him the memes around that,” says Lionel Boyce, of his resistance to teasing his co-star Jeremy Allen White’s internet-destroying Calvin Klein campaign, “I wouldn’t want the memes if that were me.”
Which is the kind of empathetic kindness which is anathema to a snarky journalist seeking underwear chat, but is absolutely indicative of the world of The Bear.
For while the multiple award-winning Disney+ sensation is absolutely intense, relentlessly gripping, sweary, screamy, often emotionally violent, it is fundamentally a feel-good show, one in which a bunch of messed up characters find answers to their problems in being together.
For a show that initially revolved around the return of chef Carmy (White) to Chicago to take over the family sandwich shop after the suicide of his brother, and deals unflinchingly with anxiety, trauma and grief, the direction of the show is always towards hope and healing.
Boyce, as pastry chef Marcus, is emblematic of that. The most softly spoken character in the show, he plays a deceptively important role, as a vulnerable, earnest if equally troubled counterpoint to the explosiveness going on elsewhere.
He is particularly important in season three, which has just landed. No spoilers here, but after the events at the end of season two, with the opening of a spanking new iteration of The Bear restaurant coinciding with Carmy hitting the self-destruct button, the new series starts with Carm prepping a whole new, elite, Michelin-targeting mission for the place.
As is his want, it is all manifestos and self-help slogans and menu radicalism, something his co-workers roundly ridicule him for. But Marcus, newly dealing with grief, has a quiet yet crucial word with him that essentially kickstarts the whole season. Carmy asks if he can do anything to help Marcus, and Marcus responds by simply asking that he makes a success of the restaurant: ”Take us there, Bear.”
“The restaurant gives Marcus a purpose,” Boyce tells me, just as cool and laidback as Marcus is, and apparently jetlag-free in his hotel room, despite only arriving in the country the night before.
“There’s this thing where if someone doubts you, you have this fire where you want to prove them wrong, and [for Carmy] that’s what’s killing you. But when someone’s like, ‘I believe in you’, you feel the burden of letting them down. For Marcus, he’s leaning on Carmy, saying, ‘This is my purpose to be here, it’s what his loved one would have wanted, so steer the ship where you believe it can go and I’ll follow you there.’”
It's a lovely moment, one that illustrates why The Bear connects with people. It’s not a car chase or a dragon fight, it’s a little moment between two wounded people, and it’s why audiences have leaned in.
Fans really care about these characters, have come to know them, and this is no accident – the famed intensity of the episodes comes from a stylistic decision to get up close with the characters. The ultra close-ups of faces and food, the hand-held camera scrutiny, the extended takes, the pure unnerving excellence of the editing, this is about the claustrophobia of a kitchen but also the claustrophobia of family, of colleagues, of memory, of your own negative thoughts.
Pressure exerting itself from every angle, as most brilliantly illustrated in episode one of the new season, which is mostly flashbacks but comes with a rhythm and style that – contrary to some critics, intent on a Bear backlash, complaining that nothing happens – is full to bursting with psychological weight. Never has mental health been realised so effectively on screen.
“The human aspect is very specific,” Boyce says of its remarkable connection powers, “By being honest about this food world, it connects to everyone. No matter what industry you work in, you’re facing the same problems that everyone deals with. There’s work problems and then there’s real life problems, and sometimes they overlap and they’re in conflict. That’s what this show addresses in such a real way.”
This intimate approach is not just the style but the method of filming too, which is kept small, with cast and crew living with each other near the set in Chicago. Shooting takes places in February for The Bear, just after award season, and while the gongs are now stacking up – it won six Emmys this January, the same as Succession – the approach to the new season didn’t really change.
“Yeah when you’re winning all these awards it feels bigger and bigger. But I think it’s cool that the moment we get to Chicago, we just reverse back to this small thing and hanging out with each other,” Boyce says.
“I think if the show was filmed in LA or New York, where we’re not so disconnected from our normal lives, it would feel different. But Chicago is like campus, and the show is the only thing that matters in the world. It’s a smaller set, a lot of us live in the same place. It’s like a college dorm!”
When they first started shooting The Bear, they had no idea it would turn into this hit, the kind of hit that changes the way people dress (well men at least). “We had no idea it would happen, we were making the show in a vacuum, no one’s looking for it, no-one’s checking for it, we didn’t have high profile people in it,” says Boyce.
“I thought it would be an excellent show but I thought it’d probably be one season, watched by just a core group of people. But it came out in June and by July there were memes going around. We were in a group chat and at first we’d be excited that someone made a meme of the show. Most were of Jeremy, but as we kept on sending them, he would get annoyed, ‘OK please stop sending memes of me.’ That was when we realised it was entering a cultural space.’”
Now White has hit supernova level, Boyce is not keen to follow suit with his own Calvin’s campaign – “not for me right now” – and prefers to talk about White’s acting chops: “We don’t rehearse much, so really the first time you’re doing it is when we’re rolling. I just like being with him in the moment, He’s such a great actor, I just like being present with him. You just react, he’s doing the heavy lifting. It’s cool. I really like Carmy and Marcus’ relationship, it’s moving to me, the way they’re finding different ways to connect other than just in cooking.”
There was some controversy at the Emmys over whether The Bear is a comedy or a drama – it swept up in the comedy category but many claimed this most emotionally wringing of shows was most certainly a drama. The truth is it veers easily between the two. For every super-moody episode, there’s others that are hysterically funny, and most often episodes balance the two. Boyce manages to straddle this with ease as Marcus, and his background is very much in comedy.
“I loved Jim Carrey as a kid, along with Keenan Ivory Wayans, Dave Chapelle, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, that’s my comedy DNA,” he says, “I came into all this through a comedy sketch show for Adult Swim, acting in skits and writing. I write still to give me some autonomy. I’d love to do a big comedy film.”
He managed to achieve a life goal by making a guest appearance in the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm earlier this year: “That was one of the pipe dreams I had when I first was getting into this. You envision being in a Tarantino film, or on a Spielberg set, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to be playing a small part on Curb, that would be sick.’ For that to happen was just wild.”
Boyce seems like a very open, very sensitive person, and the role of Marcus has a genuine cathartic role in his life. He really feels what his character goes through, and takes it back into his own life: “There’s emotions in our everyday life that we omit, that we don’t express. So there’s certain things we are exploring in the show, like grief, where even though it’s the character saying it, you’re saying these things out loud and still experiencing it. I’ve expressed a part of myself out loud in the scene. So you can take that out into your everyday life, and can communicate a little better, or more clearly, and are more articulate because of it.”
The Bear then is working as much for the actors as it is for audiences in finding a way to present and understand and work through problems. Which may well be the ultimate reason for its success and its unique status: it is finding a language for how to be human in the modern world.
You can see it in the style, in the writing, in the acting, in the vision of the thing. Boyce says the whole attitude of the production is to ignore everything else and just go all out: “I think Chris [Storer, the creator] and the writers, and everyone, does a good job of taking risks every season. It’s not like they’re going to try to recreate what worked before. I remember season two, I didn’t know if it was going to work because it was nothing like the first season. And this new season is nothing like the previous. I respect that. Chris is finding ways to push TV, he’s taking big swings. That’s all you can ask for.”
Indeed it is. But come on Lionel, what’s it really like when you’re together off-set, is it just as explosive? Are Ebon Ross-Bachrach and Jeremy Allen White at each other’s throats like Richie and Carm?
Boyce shakes his head: “Ebon is probably the furthest from his character of all of us. He’s just nice, calm, fun to hang out with. The thing that he shares most with the character is he loves being part of a group of friends. Everyone’s normal! It’s not like the dynamic of the show. Jeremy’s affable, he likes cracking jokes. It’s not like you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in his mind. We’re hanging out!”
Fair play. No great revelations, just people being people. But how The Bear has managed to turn people being people into high art is a wonder of our cultural age.
