Cousin! How Richie from The Bear became its best character

I did not expect to find Ebon Moss-Bachrach sitting on the corner of 52nd Street and Park Avenue in New York City just after 5.30 in the afternoon. Nor did I expect the star of the foodie comedy-drama The Bear to pull a home-made loaf of sesame rye from a cotton tote bag, but we will get to that.

“Yeah, this is not my normal milieu, so to speak,” he says, laughing. “But here I am, here we are.”

There he is. Talking over Zoom before he heads to dinner at lush fine dining restaurant The Grill with some of The Bear crew before the release of season two. “I was told to wear a suit and I like to follow directions.”

Ebon Moss-Bachrach has turned one of The Bear’s more unsympathetic characters into a fan favourite.

By any measure, The Grill (rib-eye, $US88) is a long way from the stuffed Italian sandwiches ($US14.50) of The Original Beef of Chicagoland, the shop at the heart of The Bear, the sweaty, stress-inducing series that became a hit last year and sent sales of its signature sandwich soaring throughout the US.

Moss-Bachrach plays Richie, the not-related-but-we’ll-call-him-that-anyway cousin to Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy Berzatto, a Michelin-star-winning chef who returns to his home town to run the old-school Italian sandwich shop left to him by his brother older Mikey, whose death shapes and clouds season one.

When it premiered last year, The Bear was a shouty, sweaty, anxiety-inducing smash – critics loved it and chefs praised it for its realistic portrayal of stress-filled kitchen life.

And while White received the majority of attention (and internet heat – think lusty variations on “Yes, chef”) hiding in plain sight was Moss-Bachrach, whose performance as the loudmouth and annoying Richie was compelling. He managed to turn someone who, on paper, was the most unsympathetic character in the show into its most sympathetic. It’s a role Moss-Bachrach does so well, he was nominated for his first Emmy on Thursday, in the best supporting actor comedy category.

“I’m a pretty quiet person, at least in my real life,” Moss-Bachrach says. “And Richie is mostly somebody that lives at a maximum volume. Somebody that doesn’t try to – I think of myself as a very accommodating person – and Richie is very faithful and in his heart, he is maybe not accommodating, but he is certainly a caretaker. Very loyal, very loving.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ricard “Richie” Jerimovich and Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto in season two of The Bear.

“He’s got a really strong moral code that involves family and love. I think he would do anything, literally, for the people that belong to him. But for me, personally, it’s nice to play somebody that maybe doesn’t feel the need to censor themselves. It’s nice to stop listening.”

What would Richie think of Moss-Bachrach’s current uptown surrounds? “Probably a lot of f---ing yuppies,” he says, looking around.

Season two of The Bear picks up a week or so after the end of season one. The Beef is closed and Carmy and his sous chef Sydney (the incredible Ayo Edebiri) have plans to turn it into a fine diner. The Beef is dead, long live The Bear. They’ve given themselves 12 weeks to do it, but are short on cash, time and have a building that’s crumbling around them. What they do have, though, is purpose, which Richie does not.

“I’m 45 and I’ve been here a long time, you feel me? You know what the f--- you’re doing. You love all this shit,” he says to Carmy, gesturing to the restaurant. “It’s fun for you. I don’t have that.”

Moss-Bachrach delivers the line with such quiet sadness that you feel deeply for him.“He’s still lost and grieving,” Moss-Bachrach says. “And railing against the injustice of time and progress.”

But what he does have is a sledgehammer – and in taking down the walls of The Beef, Richie starts to drop his guard. “Demolition is very therapeutic for him,” Moss-Bachrach confirms. He challenges himself, his relationship with Carmy softens further and he even has a go at being friendly with Sydney. Whether he likes it or not – whether any of them do – Richie is the glue that holds The Bear together. And Richie, like all good underdogs, gets his redemption arc.

Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto and Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu.

“People come up to me and they express a lot of sympathy for him and love for him,” Moss-Bachrach says. “I mean, he’s a frustrating character, for sure, but I also think he’s deeply sympathetic in a really understandable way. His circumstances are so dire.

“He’s lost, he’s lost so much – he’s lost his family and his best friend – he’s in freefall. He’s a very sympathetic character. I don’t think everything he does is justified – he uses a big scary voice, he doesn’t like Sydney – he does things that are 100 per cent not OK. But I think he is really well-meaning. He’s really soft and sweet.”

And that’s what makes season two such a delight – where the first season was claustrophobic, Part II (as it’s called in the credits) is more open and lighter on its feet. The light is different, the music is different (although I dare you not to tear up when REM’s Strange Currencies starts playing episode three).

We see everyone’s lives grow outside the restaurant. It’s a bold move for a show that was so attached to its location, but it never feels forced. If anything, it’ll make you hungry, especially when Sydney spends a day sampling Chicago’s food scene, including Michelin-starred bakery Kasama.

What we don’t see much of though, is the sandwich that gave The Beef its name in season one. It’s famous in the US, generally served with thin slices of roast beef and a dollop of giardiniera (an Italian relish) with a dipping sauce on the side.

They’re not too common here – in Melbourne you can find something similar at Stefanino Panino in Brunswick and in Sydney, give Harvey’s in Parramatta a crack – but to me, any sandwich that requires dipping is just plain weird.

“Yeah, it’s weird to me, too,” he says. “And I would say, the most distinctive quality of the sandwich is not necessarily the taste, but the consistency. There’s a sort of race against time, where you have to dip the roll and the meat in this jus, and it’s literally falling apart from the time you get it. You really have to beat the clock.

“My brother was visiting me [in Chicago] and we shared a beef sandwich and he really loved it and wanted to take another one on a plane and I was like, ‘That’s not physically feasible.’ Time is really working against you. They’re a bit like a French dip sandwich. Do you have those in Australia?”

Not that I know of. We’re more of a squirt-sauce-on-the-bun kind of people.

“OK. It’s a kind of spicy roast beef. You can get them with sweet peppers,” he continues. “Everyone has their own. Chicago is a crazy place, you can get a beef sandwich with a sausage inside, with the shredded beef, just to get a glimpse into the maniacal carnivore culture they have here.”

The Bear was part of a golden run Moss-Bachrach had last year, along with roles in the Star Wars spinoff Andor and as a journalist in the Elizabeth Holmes drama The Dropout. He’s still best known for playing Marnie’s awful boyfriend in Desi in Girls, but Andor helped him scratch a childhood itch.

“I mean, I’m born in 1977, when the first [Star Wars] came out,” he says. “It was hard. My first day on set, I had to talk about – I’m forgetting the jargon – but I just had to say all this stuff. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m in this universe now’ and I had to pause and take a couple of minutes.”

The only bummer? In the manner of many a rogue in the Star Wars universe, you won’t be seeing him again.

“That’s a little too soon,” he says, laughing. “I’ll get there, I’ll get there. I was ready to spend a little bit more time there.”

Now, about that bread he is carrying around. At home, Moss-Bachrach is a keen cook, which is one of the great ironies of The Bear – he was actively encouraged to stay out of the kitchen. He bakes a fresh loaf of bread every day, even before the pandemic started, and today’s loaf is for one of The Bear crew.

“I just love it,” he says. “And I feel like even when I screw it up, it’s still pretty tasty. It’s messy and dirty and for me, it works. I just love this pursuit of this elusive thing and I’ll never get it right.”

Our time is nearly up, dinner is calling. Is he the kind of person who checks the menu before he goes out to a restaurant?

“When I go out with these guys, and Chef Matty [Matty Matheson, a real-life chef who plays the tattooed Neil on The Bear], I’m not in any position to order anything. I let the chefs’ decide. I know my place.”

The Bear streams on Disney+ from July 19.

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