In ‘The Bear,’ Abby Elliott Follows a New Recipe

Abby Elliott knows a thing or two about comedy. A veteran of the Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade, she joined “Saturday Night Live” at age 21 and has since appeared on laugh-ready shows like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Odd Mom Out.” So in the spring of 2021, when FX approached her about a pilot for a new comedy, she expressed interest.

“I was like, ‘Oh, should I do a voice?’ » said Elliott. “Or could I make a little slogan?” This could be fun. »

That show was “The Bear,” which returns for its third season Thursday on Hulu. Set largely in the busy kitchen of a Chicago restaurant, it stars Jeremy Allen White as a struggling chef. Elliott appears as her indulgent sister. “The Bear” is a comedy only in the classic sense of the term, in the sense that it emphasizes human weaknesses and does not end in disaster. (Isn’t a workplace plagued with panic, money woes, and suicidal thoughts a disaster? Be sure to ask the Emmy voters, who in January awarded her the award for the best comedy.) Otherwise, it’s dramatic, frenetic, extremely stressful.

“I didn’t really understand how high the stakes would be,” she said.

For what it’s worth, Elliott considers “The Bear” a comedy. “It’s like real life,” she says. “A lot of people find comedy in darkness and stress. It’s so relevant in that way. But a funny thing happened on the way to the kitchen: “The Bear” made Elliott a dramatic actress. She doesn’t make a voice.

I met Elliott, 37, at an Upper West Side coffee shop one summer morning, the sun setting low, about a week before the Season 3 premiere. Even though she lives in Los Angeles and works in Chicago, she had come to the East Coast for a family wedding and then enjoyed a few days in the city.

At breakfast, she was well dressed and fresh-faced (she admitted to having a thick layer of self-tanner), despite the heat. She’s got big eyes, a sardonic, tight-lipped smile, and a talent for instant intimacy, especially when describing how she spent the 2024 Golden Globes pumping breast milk backstage alongside an also-post Sarah Snook -partum.

If there’s an allele for laughter, Elliott has it. Her father is Chris Elliott, a late-night talk show regular seen most recently on “Schitt’s Creek,” who spent one season on “SNL.” Her father is Bob Elliott, one half of the Greatest Generation comedy duo Bob and Ray, who also made an appearance on “SNL.” (Abby’s mother, Paula Niedert Elliott, is a former talent coordinator for David Letterman.)

Elliott doesn’t feel pressured to perform on stage. Her father, whom she idolized, showed her that a life in showbiz was possible, even desirable. But he never made her watch his appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman” and he encouraged her to go to college.

“I mean, there were options,” she said. “I just don’t know how to do anything else and I never really knew.”

She dropped out after one semester and moved to Los Angeles, living with relatives and taking improv classes. She was invited to “SNL” a few years later. Name recognition, a mild form of nepotism, probably got her into 30 Rock, but it was a gift to boisterous celebrity impressions (Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep) that kept her there .

She left after four years on the show and worked steadily throughout the next decade, though usually in the kind of goofy supporting roles that rarely crack the cultural radar. She’s made peace with that.

“I was in such a safe zone of like, OK, well, this is exactly what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s like, okay, I’m not going to be able to get these roles or play dramatic roles.”

Christopher Storer, the creator of “The Bear,” thought differently when he was looking for an actress to play a loving, pragmatic sister. He’d never worked with Elliott before, but he remembered her from “SNL” — especially her impressions.

“There was something so authentic about it,” he said. “You could feel the affection for the people she was portraying.”

He wanted that affection for Natalie Berzatto, nicknamed Sugar, the older sister of White’s Carmy and clearly the only member of their family who had ever been to therapy. And Storer suspected that Elliott, a trained improv comedian, was good at working very, very quickly, a necessity on a show that values ​​rawness and budgets few takes. She auditioned remotely; Storer was hit. “She felt very human,” he said.

Natalie has only one scene in the pilot, a moment in which she speaks with Carmy about their older brother, Mikey, who died by suicide. Although brief, it communicates the love and trauma between siblings. She and White didn’t discuss the scene before shooting it — or before reshooting it, months later. But White remembers feeling an immediate kinship.

“Whatever our imaginations did, we were telling ourselves the same story,” White said in a telephone interview. He described the scenes between Carmy and Natalie as a respite from the chaos of the kitchen. Other cast members felt the same way.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays cousin Richie, said Elliott “is in some ways a straight man – practical, surrounded by this extremely erratic extended family.” If he hadn’t known, he would never have guessed that Elliott had served time on ‘SNL’

“Not because she’s not funny, but just because she’s being punished,” he said. “He’s not a star. She really has so much integrity and rigor.

In season one, Natalie is isolated from the restaurant, but in season 2 she goes inside, first as a project manager during a gut renovation, then as general manager. This was not necessarily what Storer and Joanna Calo, the two showrunners, had planned. But Elliott’s performance convinced them to bring her on.

“I was like, ‘Oh, thank you,’” Elliott said of getting into the kitchen. “I had so much FOMO.”

While season 2 was being written, Elliott learned she was pregnant with her second child. (Her husband is screenwriter Bill Kennedy.) She told Storer and Calo, and they decided to write a pregnancy for Natalie as well.

Still, Elliott’s pregnancy was distinct. She was energetic while Natalie was exhausted. And in a heartwarming scene in which Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney makes Natalie an omelette, Elliott needed a spit bucket – pregnancy had given him an aversion to eggs. By the time filming began for Season 3, which explores the idea of ​​inheritance — genetic and otherwise — she had already given birth. She had to wear a prosthetic stomach and fake heartburn.

Natalie is the most nuanced character Elliott has ever played. His scenes involve subtext, a professional first. “My career has been all text,” she said. “I’ve done things where I explain exactly how I feel, like so many times.”

Filming Season 3 while caring for a baby and toddler didn’t make Elliott’s schedule any easier. (Her mother accompanied her to Chicago, as did a nanny.) But it made her a more centered and focused actress. Her time on set is, she said, “adult time.” Then she comes home and kids time begins.

“I am so lucky to have these beautiful, wonderful children,” she said. “I don’t go home and drink a bottle of wine and obsess over this weird take, like I did in my 20s.”

If “The Bear” made Elliott a better actor, it didn’t make her a better cook, even though the food on the show, prepared by Storer’s sister, Courtney Storer, is apparently excellent. (The piccata Natalie makes in the second episode of the series? Elliott wrapped it in a plastic bag and ate it in the van on the way home.)

“I would love to cook,” Elliott said. “But I barely shower every day. These are all orders from air fryers and Target.