Before “The Bear,” Edebiri says she knew her way around a kitchen to a point, enjoying cooking with family or for friends, but admits that it’s a whole different ballgame training to be a chef.
“It was kind of cathartic returning to a restaurant with less fear. I remember always being afraid of the chefs,” she says. Now that Edebiri is playing one on TV, she appreciates the real-world effort that goes into running a restaurant every day.
“Jeremy said once, ‘I look at every restaurant like it’s a miracle,’ and I think that’s so true. Just how every night it can keep operating and everybody keeps going just because they have to is really astounding and admirable and cool,” she says.
Edebiri says her friends are holding on to hope that her on-screen skills in the kitchen will continue to translate to feasts at her dinner table. She explains that when she was practicing making cola-braised short ribs with risotto for friends last year, they had no idea it was because she was preparing to make the dish in-character on what was soon to be a hit TV show.
“Jeremy said once, ‘I look at every restaurant like it’s a miracle,’ and I think that’s so true.”
“I think when the show came out, they were all like, ‘We just thought you were depressed and lonely, and that’s why you were cooking for us,’” she laughs. “I was actually doing work!”
Still, even with all the acclaim for her role, Edebiri is taken aback by justhowwell-received “The Bear” and her performance have been.
“I guess any sort of feedback at all feels surprising,” she says. “There’s so much content — so many shows people can watch, and so many things people could pay attention to, and a lot of it is really good. For our show to break through it, in a way, has definitely been surprising … but really nice.”
For those curious about what’s in store for Sydney in the second season of “The Bear,” you’re not alone: Edebiri, too, is wondering about her character’s future.
“I really don’t know anything about Season Two, which I’m really sad to say,” Edebiri says, answering my question before I even finish asking it. “I know they’re just writing it right now, so hopefully I’ll know soon.”
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Growing up in Boston as the daughter of immigrants — an only child born to a father from Nigeria and a mother from Barbados — Edebiri would have never predicted she’d end up not just as a writer, but an actor. She hassaid that religion was a big part of her adolescencegrowing up in a Pentecostal family and attending private schools in the Boston area, but her upbringing didn’t turn her into an angsty, rebellious teen; instead, she was a well-behaved kid whoread the Bible for fun.
“My dad joked, ‘You were very good at disciplining yourself,’” Edebiri says. “He was like, ‘We never got to discipline you. Because you would just stop yourself before you did anything.’”
“‘It’s not always the loudest person or the class clown who’s the funniest. It can be the person who likes watching people, observing and listening to them.’”
Her initial childhood ambitions were to enter the medical field, but Edebiri remembers that as a teen, a teacher steered her toward the performing arts. After drama class, she was asked to join the improv group at school.
“I remember saying, ‘I don’t really think that’s my calling, sorry,’” Edebiri says. “And my teacher said to me, ‘It’s not always the loudest person or the class clown who’s the funniest. It can be the person who likes watching people, observing and listening to them.’”
It was while living in New York after she got her bachelor’s degree at NYU that friends and acquaintances in the New York comedy scene showed her that she might be able to consider a career in entertainment. “It seems very stupid, but while I was in New York, I discovered that writing was an actual job — that it was something I could learn how to do,” she says.
Inspired by the writing of movies like “Moonlight” and “The Truman Show” and the work of Charlie Kaufman and Kenneth Lonergan, Edebiri stuck with writing. Eventually, she landed gigs in the writers rooms for the NBC sitcom “Sunnyside” and Apple TV+’s “Dickinson,” the latter of which marked her first major acting role as Hattie, appearing alongside Hailee Steinfeld.
Edebiri’s first big headlines, however, would come during her stint in the hit sitcom “Big Mouth.” Although she also started there in the writers room, Edebiri later took over the voice role of Missy Foreman-Greenwald, a Black character, after Jenny Slate, a white actor,exited the series, writing onInstagram, “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.”
The cartoon is now in its sixth season, with guest stars likeQuinta Brunsonand Lena Waithe playing Missy’s cousins, joining Chelsea Peretti and Jordan Peele, who play her parents.
