Vulture

Edwin Lee Gibson Unpacks The Bear’s ‘Great Articulation of Gentrification’

Written By: Roxana Hadadi

Spoilers follow for the fourth season of The Bear, all 10 episodes of which premiered on Hulu on June 25. 

The Beef is going to save the Bear, and you can thank Ebraheim for that.

The former sandwich shop’s longtime line cook, played by Edwin Lee Gibson, took a winding path through the restaurant’s various iterations, quietly dropping out of culinary school before returning to feed working-class locals at the Bear’s lunchtime sandwich window. While nearly everyone else in the cast got recruited into the “elevated” atmosphere of the Bear (and, the series seems to suggest, improved themselves by doing so), Ebra kept his component running smoothly, efficiently, and, as revealed in season four, very profitably. Carmy’s business struggles to get into the black this season, but the Beef is doing so well that Ebra starts thinking about ways to “create opportunity” for the restaurant. That leads him to a mentorship from a local businessman played by TV legend Rob Reiner, the idea to franchise the Beef into three locations around Chicago, and an openhearted arc for Ebra that reaffirms how essential the character is to this series’ — and restaurant’s — success.

“Ebraheim’s like me in a lot of ways: a nomad, someone who goes toward what they need and what’s going to serve them,” says Gibson, who recently wrapped the second season of Fallout and is finalizing the edit of his directorial debut, the short film a pink and red dress made of satin … covered in flowers, mostly roses. “This great articulation of gentrification is happening on this show, and when that fails, the mom-and-pop places remain. What happens when everything comes full circle, and only the mom-and-pop shop is left?”

Ebra is very adaptable, which is why I loved when he’s pulling out spreadsheets and graphs and showing them to Carmy. It proves that he’s really taken to running the Beef. In this season, he finds a business mentor, who is played by Rob Reiner. When did you find out that it would be Rob, and how did you two work together? 
We get a key into some part of Ebra’s history with these spreadsheets. In season one, it’s alluded to him being in the military in East Africa. I’ve been thinking, What was his job? He’s a lot smarter than people think, and that’s an immigrant story — someone can be a doctor in another country, and they come here and have to work in a kitchen.

With Rob, we got along great. I’ve been watching him since he was Michael Stivic on All in the Family, one of the shows I grew up on. We met the morning we began to shoot, and we could have gone on all day. We had great chats, but it looks like we spent a lot of time together. I said to him, “We’re the comedy team no one knew they needed.” Most people, I guess, would really know me as a straight dramatic actor, and that allowed me to flex some comedy.

Did you have a specific job for Ebra in mind? 
One of the things I do for myself — because I’m a writer as well — is write a scene each season with Ebra and another character, just to keep him sharp and to understand what’s happening. I do have an idea, and hopefully that appears in the fifth season. If you take “Ebra” and you take “Bear,” they’re anagrams. No one thought about that except me, okay? [Laughs.] I brought that up, and I think Christopher Storer said something like, “Dude.” If Ebra knows this, then that gives some real insight into what kind of brain he has. When you think about it like that, you can see how he and Carmy are really alike: loving, not really knowing how to express it. Since season two, I’ve been thinking about how similar they are.

I love that Ebra is one of the first people Carmy apologizes to in this season, as he is really starting to own his bullshit. What was that like to shoot with Jeremy Allen White? 
I love that kid. He and I don’t get very many moments together, but when we do, we really treasure them. We ran it a couple of times in rehearsal. It’s one of those things where it’s so lovely you want to run it again, not because you’re trying to get it right, but because you don’t want this moment to end. In the theater, I would have eight times a week for that moment. Here, I’ve got maybe four times in a life for that moment. Hopefully, we get to do a little bit more.

If there’s anyone Carmy can talk to that will listen, and not just judge what he says, but really listen and give him the space to be who he wants to be and to apologize, that’s Ebra. Whatever Ebra has seen between seasons three and four has made him want to be more integral than he’s been, and he goes about that work because of his love for Mikey, because of his love for Carmy.

Ebra spends a lot of time with Chi-Chi and Chuckie running the Beef. Those two characters are so braggadocious and ridiculous but also great at their jobs. Tell me about shooting with Christopher Zucchero and Paulie James. 
Christopher Zucchero’s dad started Mr. Beef. He’s such a lovely guy. Since season one, he’s called me his acting coach. He gets so nervous. When he first had the scene with Rob, he couldn’t even get anything out. And Paulie, he’s just Paulie. Sometimes actors don’t like to work with people that are not actors, and I’m like, “Nah.” My job is to silently steer the ship. That’s what the actor in me knows they have to do with someone who is more of a novice.

When you guys aren’t filming, are the three of you talking about food? 
Not really. It’s me saying to Paulie, “Hey, man, when I come by your spot in West Hollywood, I don’t wanna pay for anything.” [Laughs.]

The food on the show is actual food, not prop food. How much of it are you eating? 
There have been things that I’ve eaten that I wasn’t supposed to eat yet. I thought we were done with the take! But that was early on. Now I make sure. There are no hand doubles; we’re all in there. That was a very specific thing Christopher and Joanna Calo wanted right from the onset. Now that we’ve gotten better, the camera pulls away to actually see us doing everything. Courtney Storer, the culinary producer, and Matty Matheson, you can put on weight just listening to them talk about what food is coming. I literally come back from work about ten pounds heavier every season. I have to lose it. It’s madness.

One of the funniest moments this season is when the franchising idea is brought to Ebra and he starts listing other restaurant’s slogans: “I’m loving it,” “Eat fresh,” even a Beef-inspired spin on Arby’s with, “We have the beefs.” Were any other slogans bounced around during filming? 
We got everybody rolling. Luckily, the sound doesn’t pick up the laughter. Christopher would give us things, in the moment, on different takes, and you really get to do what I think the job is: Be as effective a listener as possible. You’re hearing it and you’re letting it out. A rule of comedy is the rule of threes, and I think we got four or five. There were a few that didn’t make the cut, but the ones that did were the ones that were supposed to. You don’t want to go on any longer than it needs to.

You have a storied theater background; you’ve appeared in more than 100 productions. You’ve said of being on this show, “The people that you don’t see behind the camera, they are my theater audience now. If I can move them, I think I’m doing something right.” Was there a scene this fourth season that felt most theatrical for you? 
Ebra and Carmy in the office, when Carmy comes and finds Ebra still working. You can hear things on set when it goes really, really silent. I try and pull the crew into this space that I need as a theater actor. And then when you’re done, that feeling, that reaction — it’s like coming offstage, and the audience is there saying, “Thank you.” When we’re doing the outdoor shots, you can feel the crew get quieter than normal. You can see people stopping and watching. I take my marker from them. If there’s something that I don’t think I hit, they’ll inform me, like the theater audience would inform me in the moment.

What do you want to see for Ebra in season five? 
I’d like to see his psychological trauma. We haven’t seen that yet. We’ve seen everyone else’s thing, that ticking clock. We haven’t seen what Ebra’s is yet. I’d love to see him doing his thing, but then his trauma hits, and we’re thrown back into what happened many years ago. It’s fitting with the show that there’s an exploration of him, because there’s been this exploration of how things are just so grand and then they rip our hearts out.