Spoilers for Season 2 of The Bear are ahead. You can stream both installments of the FX dramedy with a Hulu subscription.
In Season 1 of FX's The Bear we came to know and love the set of The Beef. Just about every moment of the first season took place in that restaurant, and I know I grew to love it. Well, now in the new season on the 2023 TV schedule, things are looking very different. Carmy’s business is getting a face-lift and a full gut as it turns itself into The Bear, and to film this transformation the cast was “literally ripping” apart the set too.
The cast of The Bear had mixed emotions about tearing down their beloved set of The Beef. On one hand, it was fun for Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays Richie, and Lionel Boyce, the actor behind Marcus, to cause some chaos and pack up the set. However, it also had its emotional moments, as Moss-Bachrach explained to CinemaBlend:
We were literally ripping it apart. You know, that was our stage, that was like stage 41 and the restaurant, and we were taking it down. And I have a scene where I'm taking some kind of a saw, a motorized saw through a wall. I took that wall down and that was literally like wrapping that whole set. We were never going to be on that set again. It was sort of emotional...Yeah, it's fun. And it's, you know, dramatic, certainly with all that banging.
I can totally see why this would be emotional for them. This set was the place the cast came together to make its magnificent first season, and I’d imagine filming in such a small space with this group of people really bonded them. However, as it was revealed at the end of The Bear's first season, it was time to grow out of their old digs and into some new ones. To put it simply, Carmy and especially Sydney are bound and determined to make a restaurant worthy of a Michelin Star.
For Lionel Boyce, who plays the lovable baker Marcus, tearing down the set felt kind of like the last day of school. While the comparison threw me for a second, it actually makes a lot of sense once he gave his reasoning. The actor explained:
It felt like the last week of school to me, you know what I mean? Where it's like, if you're one of the kids who goes to school and one of the last two to three days, because you're out at noon, and you walk in, it's like six other kids in there. It's that exact same bittersweet feeling that exists, it's like most of the furniture is packed away.
He’s right, that feeling of only seeing a few folks at school and finding that everything has been put away is really odd, and can feel quite final. In the show we see a lot of Marcus, Richie, Carmy and Fak tearing down the restaurant while the rest of the crew is working outside of their building.
However, also like school, The Beef is moving up, and Boyce explained how literally tearing down the set helped him play out that transition as Marcus, he said:
It definitely felt as if we were really moving out of this place. And it was cool, because it was built on one stage and everything else was built somewhere else. So we were given liberty to just really tear it down. And you're filming these moments, and You're like, ‘Wow, this is crazy that this is actually happening.’ Even like Episode 1, we're packing, everything's rolled up. It’s so easy to get right into the scenes in the moments because everything is working and everything feels real on that set.
Watching those scenes it’s clear how emotional the moment is for them. It’s also obvious how much fun they had tearing down this set to make room for their new one. Like many storylines on The Bear, this renovation is chaotic, fun and heartfelt (in a sense). So now, knowing that the actors literally went through the same experience taking apart their set makes it all the more meaningful to me.
To see the transformation of The Beef into The Bear, you can stream Season 2 of The Bear right now on Hulu.
