Jeremy Allen White found his confidence on an off-Broadway stage.
His parents met as actors in the 1980s New York City theater scene and passed the torch to their son, who booked stage work before he was out of middle school. "I felt really good on stage," White recalls. "It was everywhere else that I felt uncomfortable."
This was something White reflected on in 2021 when, after eleven seasons playing Lip Gallagher on Showtime's Shameless, the Emmy-nominated series came to an end. Uncertain what the future held, he pushed himself out of his comfort zone and into, of all places, the kitchen. "I was completely uncomfortable in the kitchen before this," White says, laughing. "I really was clueless."
Viewers would never know it in The Bear, the FX half-hour — premiering on Hulu June 23 — that volleys between the adrenaline-rush highs and quiet lows of The Original Beef of Chicagoland sandwich shop. White plays Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, a trained and tormented chef who brings a fine-dining touch to his family's decidedly less-refined restaurant after his brother's death.
Mere days after joining the series, which comes from creator-writer-director Christopher Storer, White and his co-star Ayo Edebiri were elbows deep in a two-week culinary school crash course. White knew the rough-and-tumble world of Shameless, but finding his footing in the coordinated chaos of a restaurant was another story.
In addition to training with celebrity chef and consulting producer Matty Matheson, White worked at Pasjoli, a Michelin-starred French restaurant in Santa Monica. "Matty helped me out with the dance and the movement of the kitchen," White said. "When I was working on the line at Pasjoli, everybody was helping one another out. It's one big machine."
In the madness, he found a connection between the kitchen and the set — the performance. "When you are about to serve or open, it is the panic, the energy, the adrenaline that's all very similar to [a set]," he says. "That felt oddly familiar to me. I could make sense of it even though I had no idea what I was doing in the kitchen."
White doesn't consider himself a master chef by any measure, but The Bear has given him confidence in the kitchen — to the benefit of his wife and daughters. "I cook for my girls all the time," he says. "I'm still perfecting the omelet. I don't always get it perfect, but I'm always chasing it."
The Bear was created by Christopher Storer, who also serves as executive producer alongside Joanna Calo, Hiro Murai, Nate Matteson and Josh Senior, with Tyson Bidner serving as producer and Matty Matheson as coproducer. The series is produced by FX Productions. All episodes begin streaming June 23, exclusively on Hulu.
