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TV Talk: Former Pittsburgher is in the kitchen with Chef Carmy on ‘The Bear’

Written By: Rob Owen

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

PASADENA, Calif. — Last summer’s FX- produced Hulu hit “The Bear,” about chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his attempts to revive a grimy Chicago sandwich joint, returns for its second season with all 10 episodes streaming Thursday.

In season two, those efforts continue as the staff renovates the restaurant, deals with city bureaucracy and plans a new menu. Among those participating in that effort is Ebraheim, played by actor Edwin Lee Gibson, a former Pittsburgher.

Gibson, who’s also a writer and was among this year’s participants in Sony Pictures Television’s Diverse Writers Program, moved to Pittsburgh in 2012 for one reason.

“(It was) only because I wanted to live in August Wilson’s neighborhood,” Gibson said between press conferences in January during FX’s portion of the Television Critics Association winter 2023 press tour. “So I left New York and I moved to the Hill District.”

Gibson said he’s never performed in a Wilson play, though he’d like to. But he thinks Wilson’s work should be studied more than it should be performed.

“Sometimes, the way it’s done becomes a regurgitation of what someone else did,” Gibson said. “When you read (Wilson’s plays) you can see and you can feel Pittsburgh, but sometimes when the plays are done, you can’t. That’s a character that’s left out.”

Living in Pittsburgh allowed Gibson to re-read Wilson’s plays.

“You understand that the current-day Lyft and Uber (drivers) came out of the jitney drivers in Pittsburgh that were fined and arrested for doing exactly what’s happening right now,” Gibson said.

While in Pittsburgh, Gibson became a volunteer at a Pittsburgh Gay and Lesbian Community Center drop-in program for youth experiencing or in danger of becoming homeless. He also worked on Game Changers, another project involving unaccompanied-by-a-parent youth.

“Pittsburgh’s an interesting town,” Gibson said. “When you think about the migration north, what August Wilson was writing about, right when you get above that Mason-Dixon line, then you’re in Pittsburgh, and then people went off to Chicago and Minneapolis, all those places and to Canada.”

After decades working in theater — Gibson won an OBIE Award in 2006 — Gibson started getting acting work in TV in 2010, including a guest role on filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Downward Dog.”

“We really thought that was gonna go someplace,” Gibson said of the short-lived but critically acclaimed ABC comedy. “It was a great show, but I think anytime you have the animals’ mouths moving, that might be a little bit doomed. That character (I played) was going to expand but it didn’t go beyond (the initial episode order) so it just makes it look like I just had one line in the show but it was great. It was really well written.”

While in Pittsburgh, Gibson enrolled at Point Park University.

“I wanted to learn how to write” including for the screen, Gibson said. “Point Park University had just started a program. So I was in the inaugural class. And I’d already been working on some ideas, I just needed some discipline and structure.”

Gibson graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting in 2016. He then moved to Paris and acted in a theater there for two years. Since graduating from Point Park, Gibson has continued to hone his writing skills, writing three pilots, two shorts and two feature films.

Last year, he struck it big with his recurring role on “The Bear,” playing a mysterious, accented character who tends to be the center of calm in a chaotic kitchen. Gibson credits “The Bear” creator Christopher Storer with describing Ebraheim as “a mystery who’s lived many lives.” The character is from somewhere in the Horn of Africa.

“The accent just grew and you check in to see if it’s OK, if that’s the region we want, and it turned out that’s what it was,” Gibson says, noting in real life he sounds nothing like Ebraheim. “It’s a great opportunity and just flies in the face of this idea that, as an American actor, you can’t also do those kinds of roles.”

Storer said he was impressed by Gibson’s performance in a stage production in Chicago, where “The Bear” films and is set. He said viewers will learn more about Ebraheim in season two, but maybe not too much.

“In all the restaurants I’ve worked in, there’s always the guy that’s a mystery that you don’t know much about, that always has all kinds of different skills, and you’re not sure where he got them from,” Storer said. “There’s something really beautiful about Edwin’s intelligence that conveys that without having to convey anything.”

Gibson points out that both Ebraheim and affable baker Marcus (Lionel Boyce), another Black man, are the most easy-going characters in “The Bear” which he sees as defying the “angry black man” trope.

“We never talk about brown-skinned men unless they’re being volatile,” Gibson says. “I don’t know if it was by design or not but I’m really, really grateful for that, because I thought maybe (the role) might be a trope, and I wasn’t going to read for the role initially. My manager talked me into doing it, and I could not thank him enough.”

Storer said many times the actors’ personalities play a part in developing the personalities of the characters.

“When you meet Edwin and Lionel in real life, there’s something so good-natured and intelligent about them,” Storer said. “(Co-showrunner) Jo (Calo) and I were trying to just be honest. These actors end up informing a lot of what happens on the show. We’re like, you guys are so naturally sweet and gifted, we want to showcase that.”