The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach Brings the Chaos

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is in Greece, the sound of cicadas whirring through his phone and right into my ear. “I’m on an ancient island with rocks and donkeys and not much internet,” he tells me. “I’m blissfully in the sea, with my family.” He laughs to himself. “It’s really amazing.” 

His life, at this moment, is nothing like that of Richie, the hilarious, bombastic chaos agent he plays on The Bear. The FX on Hulu series, created by Christopher Storer, focuses on a world-renowned chef named Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) who packs up his knives and heads back home to Chicago to take care of the Original Beef of Chicagoland, his family’s sandwich shop, after the death of his brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal). Thanks to the show’s special alchemy—crackling dialogue, a sharp cast, and an addictive plot—The Bear has become the breakout hit of the summer. 

“It’s just a bunch of screwups trying to make some sandwiches,” Moss-Bachrach says. There are no superpowers, he points out, or outrageous sex scenes. “For a show to catch on like this…it gives me hope.”

Moss-Bachrach plays Richie, Michael’s best friend and the Beef’s resident ne’er-do-well. He chops it up with customers, razzes the kitchen staff, and employs scuzzy turns of phrase. (“Merry Christmas, lizards!”) But he’s rendered human by his tragic personal life, including his tough relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. The Beef is all he’s got: “He doesn’t really have anywhere else to be,” Moss-Bachrach says. 

The actor has become something of a specialist in playing multifaceted dirtbags, like the perfectly written Desi on Girls. He’s riotously good on The Bear, easily capturing Richie’s bad-boy-meets-sad-dad spirit. 

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Moss-Bachrach talks about the way he crafted the character, those obsessive Carmy thirst tweets, and the wild Chicago nights that prepared him for The Bear. 

Vanity Fair: I feel like everyone I know is talking about The Bear. You’ve been on majorly popular shows before, but does it feel like the show is capturing the zeitgeist in a different way than you’ve previously experienced? 

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: Well, Girls obviously comes to mind in terms of the zeitgeist, but that was a show that I came onto in the third season. Lena [Dunham] and Jenni [Konner] and the cast was really welcoming and wonderful, but I wasn’t there from day one like I was with The Bear. This sounds so cliche, but we felt like we were making something really special. But you can never anticipate anything like this. You’d be insane to think that. 

Have you ever known anyone like Richie? 

When I was a junior in college, I went to Spain for a semester. I decided last minute, and there was only one program that was chaotic enough to still be accepting people, in this town called Alicante. There were a bunch of weirdos in this program. And one of these great weirdos was a guy, also named Richie, coincidentally, who had been a fireman in the Bronx. He was maybe 40 years old, but he started being a fireman when he was 17 and finally got his pension. He decided to try to learn Spanish. And he was so amazing and loud and so happy to be in Spain. His volume was just cranked up all the time. [Laughs] I thought a lot about this guy, Richie. I’ve tried to find him, actually. I don’t know where he is anymore. 

You’ve said that friends showed you around Chicago to get a feel for the city. Where would they take you? 

The only other time I worked in Chicago was on a movie called The Lake House, maybe 16, 17 years ago. I became really close with my driver, Rob. He’s from a Teamster family and is Chicago through and through. An amazing, generous person. And we had the same birthday, so we had this double connection. All he wanted to do was show me Chicago. I remember on our birthday, we saw Motorhead at the House of Blues and he took me through some backdoor and we were on some strange little balcony where only Teamsters could go.  

So, Rob was my first call as soon as I landed in Chicago [for The Bear]. We picked up where we left off [16] years ago, and he couldn’t have been more excited to show me all of his spots. He took me to his favorite restaurant, a classic Chicago establishment not far from the United Center. The first time I went there with Rob, we got there maybe 45 minutes before they opened up at 5 p.m. and already the place was rocking. It was already an insane party. Somebody threw a dildo and hit me in the head with it. [Laughs] It’s just one of these wild Chicago spots.

That’s truly not what I thought you were going to say, but that’s a great twist.

That’s not what I thought was going to happen! I thought I was going to have some calamari. It was a different kind of night. 

Going back to that guy in Spain—your Richie is also this loud character. When you started playing him, did Chris push you to go bigger? How did you find the right balance? 

I think he was pretty big on the page, and I was interested in pushing it pretty far. I wasn’t super interested in nuance, but I made Chris and Joanna [Calo, the co-showrunner, director, and executive producer] promise me that they would bring me back if I was getting too big. They never asked me to tap the brakes. Maybe it was a mistake, but they never told me to dial it down. It was always, “Keep going, keep going, keep going. Louder, faster, bigger.” 

I think one of the things about the show that people are responding to is that we’re coming out of this endless pandemic and this isolationism. There’s something about this show and people living fully expressed in a small environment together and sweating on each other and spitting on each other and stabbing each other and just being together that I think we’re all starving for, in a way. I was just so happy to be in this chaos with everyone. 

I think what’s really fun about Richie is that he brings the chaos. But then there are moments, as in the seventh episode, where there’s maximum chaos in the kitchen, and Richie is the one who hunkers down and tries to be helpful. That was such an interesting flip. Why do you think he goes into that mode? 

I think what he does in the restaurant is fairly unclear and vague. Maybe in some ways, he’s like the mascot, or the cheerleader. I also think he has to be there. He doesn’t really have anywhere else to be. He will do anything for this place. In that seventh episode, when it’s getting really intense, he’ll do whatever it takes. He started selling coke to help them get through COVID. That’s a pretty big risk to take. You wouldn’t do that for some restaurant you were working at. 

Though we don’t see his ex-wife or daughter, they still feel present and real. What did you do to make those characters feel real for yourself? 

Oh, that’s just basic acting work. You’ve got to know who you’re talking to on those phone calls. When I’m talking to the daughter, I know exactly what she looks like and what she’s going through and her stomach issues. I know how my ex smells, what her perfume is like. That’s just the basic work that actors have to do, to fill in all that stuff. It makes it easier to say all those words.

I guess I was curious about the groundwork you laid for those characters, but it’s one of those questions that shows what a non-actor I am. 

[Laughs] No, but, you know, I don’t want to talk about acting too much, because you end up sounding like a pretentious asshole. But you do that work so you don’t see anything in the performance. 

I interviewed Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White recently, and they both talked about how great you were at improv. You would say a line and have the whole room rolling, but then you wouldn’t say it in the scene because it didn’t serve the moment. 

I always want to serve the story and the scene and the writers. I’m happy to go off a little bit, but I’m also just as happy to stick [to the script]. Chris and Joanna were very encouraging for me to stray a bit and come back. There was room. But, ultimately, most of what is on the screen was on the page. 

Also speaking of Ayo and Jeremy, they said you’re the one who brings a lot of Carmy thirst tweets into the show’s group chat.  

[Laughs] Did they really say that? 

Yeah.

That’s so funny. I’m aware of the Carmy thirst tweets. [But] I don’t really have great internet out here. I can tell you this: I understand them. I think Jeremy’s a very talented actor and a handsome young man. He’s got a really great James-Cagney-behind-bars broodiness to him. 

Getting back to Richie, though, it was really important that the audience got a sense of a man who is living a very unhealthy life. Like, there’s the scene with Ayo, with the Arby’s cups [and Richie specifies] these are from different visits. It was important for me that we see somebody who is in a grief cycle of self-loathing and self-abuse. I wanted him to look like he’s living in his car a little bit. I tried to cultivate bad skin, a little bit of puffiness. Like, a sodium coat. 

Chicago doesn’t make it hard to eat too much calamari and meatball salads. We were there in the wintertime, and I wasn’t exercising a ton or seeing the sun much. All that stuff just felt really right for this guy. Richie is a guy who feels that nobody really cares if he lives or dies. When that’s your worldview, you’re maybe not going to take great care of yourself. 

That makes me so sad, but I think that’s what makes him resonate as a character. 

Thanks. But it’s good that Jeremy looks as handsome as he does. [Laughs]

I think the relationship between Richie and Michael also resonates. You knew Jon Bernthal before, between The Punisher and Sharp Stick, directed by Lena Dunham. What made him right for Michael?

Michael is such an impossible part. I was encouraging Chris and Joanna to just to cut the scene. Maybe it’s easier to not ever see Michael. But they kept saying, Do you know anyone? Maybe they had Jon in mind. With the day we were supposed to shoot coming close, I was like, Oh, you know what? I think Jon would be really great. He’s so charismatic. So I reached out to Jon and, to his credit, without reading anything, he was just like, Man, if you’re into this, sign me up. And he was incredible. I don’t know how many other people could have done that. I love acting with Jon. 

Speaking of working with Jon and Sharp Stick, you mentioned Girls earlier. Is it surreal to think the show came out 10 years ago? 

It’s an incredibly important show. There’s so many shows that we never would’ve had had it not been for for Girls. I’m so proud and so grateful to have been a part of that. Lena is a friend who I’m in touch with a lot. Jenni’s a great friend of mine. I guess 10 years is surprising to hear because they’re both in my life. 

Do you think Richie and Desi would get along?

I don’t think they would get along, but they’re similar. They’re both big fucking babies, that’s for sure. Although, one of them is a lot better dressed than the other. There’s a lot more John Varvatos in Desi’s closet than in Richie’s.

This interview has been edited and condensed.