There are spoilers ahead for the second season of “The Bear”. You can stream both parts of the FX dramedy with a Hulu subscription.
In the first season of the TV series “The Bear” on the FX channel, we learned and fell in love with the set “Beef”. Almost every moment of the first season took place in this restaurant, and I know I fell in love with it. Well, now in the new season of the TV program 2023, everything looks very different. Karmi’s business gets a facelift and a full belly as he transforms into a Bear, and for filming this transformation, the actors also “literally tore up” the set.
The actors of “The Bear” experienced mixed feelings about the demolition of their favorite set “Beef”. On the one hand, Ebon Moss-Bakrak, who plays Richie, and Lionel Boyce, the actor of Marcus, had fun creating chaos and assembling the scenery. However, there were also emotional moments, as explained by Moss-Bachrach CinemaBlend:
We were literally tearing him apart. You know, it was our stage, it was stage 41 and the restaurant, and we demolished it. And I have a scene where I’m punching a wall with some kind of saw, a motor saw. I took down this wall, and it was literally like wrapping the whole set. We were never going to be on that set again. It was a little emotional… Yes, it’s fun. And it’s, you know, dramatic, of course, with all this bang.
I totally understand why it would be emotional for them. On this set, the actors came together to shoot a great first season, and I can imagine that shooting in such a small space with this group of people really brought them closer. However, as it turned out at the end of the first season of “The Bear”, it’s time to grow your old digs into new ones. Simply put, Carmi and especially Sydney are committed and determined to make the restaurant worthy of a Michelin star.
For Lionel Boyce, who plays the cute baker Marcus, the demolition of the scenery was something like the last day of school. Although the comparison confused me for a second, it actually makes a lot of sense when he gives his reasoning. The actor explained:
It was like the last week of school for me, you know what I mean? For example, if you are one of the children who go to school, and one of the last two or three days, because you go out at noon and come in, it’s like there are six other children there. It’s exactly the same bittersweet feeling, as if most of the furniture has been removed.
He’s right, this feeling when you see only a few people at school and find that everything has been cleaned up is really strange and may seem completely final. In the series, we see Marcus, Richie, Carmi and Fak demolish the restaurant while the rest of the team works outside their building.
However, just like at school, The Beef is moving up, and Boyce explained how literally demolishing the scenery helped him act out this transition in the role of Marcus:
It definitely felt like 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 the freedom to just demolish it. And you shoot these moments and think, “Wow, it’s crazy that this is actually happening.” As in the first episode, we are going, everything is collected. It’s so easy to get right into the scene in moments because everything works and everything feels real on this set.
Looking at these scenes, it becomes clear how emotional this moment was for them. It’s also obvious how much fun they tore down this set to make room for a new one. Like many of The Bear’s storylines, this reconstruction is chaotic, hilarious, and heartfelt (in a way). So now knowing that the actors literally went through the same experience while dismantling their sets makes it even more meaningful to me.
To see the transformation of Beef into a Bear, you can stream the second season of “The Bear” on Hulu right now.
