Abby Elliott on Big-Sister Energy and Being Sugar Berzatto
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Since the first season premiered in June of 2022, the frenetic kitchen and dynamic relationships at the heart of FX’s hit drama The Bear have dominated the airwaves and award seasons. From the very start, the series was a classic. It brought viewers into the bowels of a gritty Chicago sandwich shop and, perhaps even more poignantly, into the lives of the dysfunctional, grief-stricken, and lovable Berzatto family.
Save for an eerily calm and beautifully shot first episode, the just-released season three jumps right back into the chaos, picking up the morning after the titular high-end restaurant’s opening night. F-bombs are tossed approximately every 45 seconds, the rhythmic pace of the show’s writing hums steadily along, and audiences are immediately dropped right back into the world of the Bear.
In so many ways, the show is an homage to the restaurant industry, to Chicago, and to all the people who make the city tick. But it’s also a beautiful and complicated exploration of a particularly trauma-ridden family’s dynamics. One of the most interesting and intimate looks we get is into the relationship between Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his sister, Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto, played by Saturday Night Live alum Abby Elliott. The actor shines on the series as the sarcastic, no-bullshit big sister who seems to be doing her best to keep it together for the benefit of, well, absolutely everyone.
For Elliott, life and art have been quite intertwined over the last few years—on The Bear, Natalie was pregnant with her first child. And in real life, Elliott was expecting her second: a boy, Billy, who was born in summer 2023. “I was seven months pregnant when we wrapped season two,” she says. “So that was a big part of the beginning of season three for me—getting back into feeling pregnant.”
She had to fake it this time around—act, if you will—but it’s clear from the very first episode that Sugar’s maternal instincts have always sort of lived in high gear. Harper’s Bazaar sat down with Elliott recently to discuss her inherently motherly role, what it’s like to film those high-intensity kitchen scenes, and all things season three.
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When you first received the scripts for season three, what was your first reaction? And how much are you able to make Sugar your own?
We got the scripts all at once, and I binge-read them. I think I got them in January. I block off the whole day, and just sit in bed, and cry, and envision it. With Natalie, I really feel like he gives us—Chris Storer, our amazing writer, director, creator—he gives us so much freedom to make things our own. And if something’s written in a certain way and we feel like, “Oh, I think the character may say it in this way,” he will 100 percent give us freedom to do that.
We do improvise a lot on the show. I think it’s tough with the very quick group scenes, so we all kind of stick to the scripts because it’s just such a fast pace, and we don’t do a ton of takes of each scene. We have to be on it with our lines. And if we improvise something, it might mess up the rhythm. And they’re written really for rhythm, those really fast scenes. But then he’ll add a scene that’s completely improvised. There was a scene with Sugar and the Faks, and they’re talking to her, and they come into the office. And that’s completely improvised, and a lot of the Faks have improv. Chris will call out a line or move us into a direction where they want it to go, just to move it along. It’s really loose and collaborative. The main plot lines are scripted, and then everything else we kind of can play with.
The first episode felt like a departure from the chaos we typically see, but then episode two puts you right back in the kitchen, where the audience is used to seeing this crew. Everyone’s yelling “Fuck you!” every five seconds. It seemed intense, but also potentially like a lot of fun to film?
It is tense, in that we all want to make sure we hit our marks and make sure that we set things up well for the person to bounce back with us. With that episode, we shot it like a play. We did a few takes—I think it was broken up into two 15- or 13-minute chunks. So there was a lot of entering and exiting, especially with Natalie. Also, I wasn’t really pregnant in season three, so to go from being pregnant in season two and still being pregnant in season three—even though I, as Abby, had my baby—that was challenging for me, with the entrances and the exits, making sure that I get back into feeling pregnant and making it seem authentic.
Things like the waddle, your stomach being out to here, and burping, and the heartburn—all of that. I was trying to imagine how I was feeling, because I was seven months pregnant when we wrapped season two. So that was a big part of the beginning of season three for me—getting back into feeling pregnant. My energy was kind of all over the place during my pregnancy, but I did, for the most part, feel really good. I was lucky to not have terrible morning sickness. In the beginning I did, but towards the end, I was in that kind of sweet spot of six or seven months, where my energy started to come back.
Sugar has always felt like such a maternal figure. There’s so much family trauma with your mom, Donna, and the loss of Mikey. You and Carmy’s characters are so close; she really seems like such a caretaker. Have you enjoyed watching her evolve in that way, or do you feel like she has grown into that because of their shared past?
Absolutely. I think during the pilot, Sugar is seeing Carmy for the first time since Mikey’s death, and she just wants him to be okay, and is desperate for him to be okay. Throughout seasons two and three, we’re seeing more of why. And it looks like [season two’s] “Fishes” episode … all of the familial trauma. She really is a fixer. She loves her brother and desperately wants to make sure that he’s okay and that he’s dealing with things. That he’s not spiraling out, that he’s not going to repeat the same patterns that their mother did and that Mikey did.
Her maternal instincts really come out, I think, in the restaurant, making sure everything’s okay, being on top of the bills, being on top of the P&L, and just really trying to take care of shit, and keep things moving. A lot of her sarcasm comes from her being frustrated by just how slowly things are being processed, and the fights. She’s rolling her eyes at Carmy and Richie, and she knows, “Let’s just get down to business, let’s just do this.” I think she has this trauma, and I think the restaurant is a way to distract her, too, from the familial stuff that she’s going through and the anxiety of becoming a new mom.
You spoke a bit to the physical aspects that you were trying to embody, but you are a mom of two now. Emotionally, do your gut instincts from being a mom in real life kick in when you’re acting out this role onscreen? Is there any through line there?
Absolutely. For whatever reason, I call my daughter “babe,” and that made it in season two, talking to the Faks like they’re children, and calling them babe. I think that was a thing that they noticed and wrote in, and it’s in season three as well. I think so much of Sugar’s “I’ll do it myself, I got to just do this,” you know? There’s an episode where everyone’s telling Sugar that they’re out of C-folds, which are the paper towels in the bathroom, and it just piles on. They’re all coming to her to tell her. That’s such a maternal thing of “this is the mom figure”—“Mom, we’re out of C-folds”—you know? And I think at the end, someone offers to go get them, and she’s like, “I’ll just do it myself,” and so she goes to get them. And that’s such a, like, “Ah, I don’t want to hear about the C-folds anymore, so I’m just going to do it myself.”
Something that has touched so many people, even non-Chicagoans, is just how much the city is a character, and how much you all have authentically integrated local restaurants, and workers, and people who make the city tick, in such a beautiful and respectful way. Have there been any interesting run-ins with locals while filming?
When we go into restaurants there, servers come up to us. Now, with kids, it’s a whole other thing, because I have so much respect for restaurant workers. My kids are throwing things on the ground, and so, every little crumb, I’m picking up after, because I just, I’m like, “No one can clean up after my kids—I have to do this!” Chicago has just been such an incredibly welcoming city. We love going to games and celebrating the food. Every restaurant we go into now, everyone is so, so nice. And it is just such difficult work. I mean, I did not last a week in a restaurant, and what they do is incredible, and it’s so hard. It’s so hard.
Do you have favorite places to eat there?
Oh my God, yes. Kasama, Avec, Bavette’s. Gibsons—I love Gibsons. You know, Chicago food … there are so many new places, and there are also the institutions, like Gibsons and Hugo’s. It’s funny: My daughter’s three and a half, and the other day she was like, “Mommy, I want to go to the Frog Bar.” I was like, “What?” I didn't even know that she knew where we were eating. And she was like, “The shrimp cocktail at the Frog Bar.”
That is so funny, and a total institution. That's so wild.
I know. But everyone is just so kind. I love deep-dish pizza. I mean, how could you not? My husband, Billy, likes Giordano’s. I like Lou Malnati’s. I haven’t done Pequod’s.
There has been an embarrassment of riches with guest stars. Do you have a favorite moment that you’ve been involved with that has stuck out to you for any reason?
Honestly, everything with Jamie [Lee Curtis, who plays Carmy and Natalie’s mother, Donna]. She’s just such an unbelievable actress. She’s such a giving, generous actress, and an icon, and I look up to her so much. I learned so much from her. The way she works, the way she dives into characters; as soon as she puts that Donna wig on and the nails, she’s her, and I’m not used to that, just being from the comedy world, where everybody’s joking around between takes. To see her commit fully, the entire day, and really have such a firm grasp on her emotions in these beautiful scenes, that was just—it was unbelievable, and unlike anything I’ve experienced. It was extraordinary.
It’s been also really cool to see how some of the actors are getting behind the camera and involved with writing, or story and directing. Do you have those aspirations?
I would love to direct. I’d love to write. I feel like I learned how to write at SNL, because you have to write for yourself there. To be able to contribute in any way, behind the scenes, I would love [to do that] on this show or in the future. I'm so excited for Ayo [Edebiri]. She has a beautiful episode this season. I think with two little kids, an episode would be great. I’m trying to wrap my head around wearing all these different hats. And as you know, it’s daunting, but I’m taking it one day at a time, and whatever comes my way at a time.
For me as an audience member, it really does authentically feel like we are watching a dysfunctional family that truly exists in this life. Does it feel that way off-camera? How this job has sort of been different from maybe other ones you’ve had in the past because of that?
We all really love each other in real life. I think we all signed on to the show because the scripts were so beautiful and we had such faith in the writers and director. But I don’t think any of us really anticipated or knew it would blow up like this. So we’ve all kind of navigated this together, and we’re so grateful and happy that we have the audience that we do, and it means so much. I think it’s bonded us all. I mean, we love each other. We’ve gone through this big thing. I think we thought in the beginning it would have maybe a cult following, or people would find it on a stream, or at night. But to anticipate this? It’s just beyond my wildest dreams.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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