‘The Bear' Q&A: Liza Colón-Zayas on playing Tina, a chef rooted in reality

Chicago Tribune

7 hours ago

When viewers first meet Liza Colón-Zayas' character on 'The Bear,' she has an icy front — reluctant to adapt to the ways of Jeremy Allen White's Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto, who's trying to breathe new, more organized life into his family's restaurant, The Original Beef of Chicagoland. It's mayhem, exacerbated by some of the longtime staff's unwillingness to see their own potential.
But soon, Tina Marrero starts paying attention to the good that can come from being open to change.
'I was learning who she was in real time, so I trusted enough that Tina would be imbued with the humanity, with the rationale — it was a matter of me trusting what's on the page,' Colón-Zayas told the Tribune. 'I try not to judge the characters — and in this world where it's so easy to want to shut down because it's dangerous, and the changes that are coming with making people expendable are real in so many communities. So I'm glad (Tina) wasn't sanitized and sugarcoated and that we could see like … if we just invest in the people that we traditionally overlook, it could be beneficial for all of us.'
Colón-Zayas said she understands Tina personally, having had similar experiences of 'feeling unwanted' throughout her decades-spanning acting career. Like Tina, Colón-Zayas has also experienced a reinvention of sorts.
At the 2024 Emmy Awards, Colón-Zayas became the first Latina to win Outstanding Supporting Actress in a comedy series. She said she still hasn't processed the speed at which 'The Bear' took off.
With Tina's backstory in full view in Season 3, the new season begins in true chaotic fashion: With a ticking stopwatch. As the Chicago sandwich shop turned fine-dining restaurant fights to stay afloat, Colón-Zayas said Season 4 is about coming to terms with the reality of the restaurant business.
As Tina evolved from a tough-on-the-outside line cook to a culinary school student refining her knife techniques, she discovered that what she had thought of as a job for survival might actually be the dream she didn't know she had. And to prepare for it, Colón-Zayas had to sharpen her cooking skills.
Colón-Zayas said she likes to cook off-screen, often making Puerto Rican food like in her New York City kitchen. But nothing compares to deboning a fish on camera, she laughed.
'I've always been curious about food. I liked watching cooking shows, but I would not say I was a great cook. I was an OK cook,' Colón-Zayas said. 'I knew how to do some of the food I grew up on, which was my mother's cooking. My life is like Tina's — I did what she knew adequately and with love. And so the more I've trained, the more I learned that I have a long way to go.'
All 10 episodes of Season 4 are streaming on Hulu and Disney+ Wednesday. The Tribune spoke with Colón-Zayas ahead of the new season. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was your experience like staging at restaurants as part of your culinary training to play Tina?
A: One of the restaurants (I staged at) was Contra on the Lower East Side. (The Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City closed down in 2023.) And I was there for a couple of days, just watching. They let me tweeze some herbs. Very tiny kitchen, spectacular cooks, but very tiny. I was basically wedged next to the trash can as tight as possible, just watching the operations in this very narrow, T-shaped kitchen, which also had the dishwashing section right there.
I was just being amazed by the choreography of it, the unspoken language, the smooth, the calm, this well-oiled machine. That was the most educational for me, because I just always had it in my head that it had to be loud and chaotic, right?
And to see that when they sit down for family meal, they discuss with each other and connect with each other and bond. It further filled in for me why Tina is in love with this family, with her (Original Beef of Chicagoland) family.
Q: How many of the skills we see Tina learning, did you, as Liza, also have to learn?
A: All of it. So first, I trained for a full week with chef David Waltuck one-on-one, learning the basics of how to even hold a knife. And also all of the basics of just cooking, and then I staged a little while later. And then anything you see me preparing, I train with our culinary consultant Courtney Storer — our amazing Coco — all the deboning of the fish, pasta prep, anything you see me doing, she's got to make sure I can pass muster.
Q: And now you have all of these culinary skills in your real life, too.
A: But like with any skill, you gotta practice it, so I still watch the YouTube videos, the training videos I love, the MasterClass stuff. Do I practice anywhere as much as I should? That's debatable.
Q: One of the most poignant payoffs of Tina's trajectory came in the form of a bottle episode in Season 3, titled 'Napkins,' which revisits how Tina landed her job at The Original Beef of Chicagoland after a cathartic conversation with the sandwich shop's boss, Mikey (Jon Bernthal). What was it like reading and connecting with what was written in that script?
A: It was emotional every single time I read it. And it validated for me that if there's space for me, then I want viewers who look like me to know that there's space for them. And that took a long, long time, many years of accepting and owning and daily meditations that there is abundance, and I deserve it.
Q: Has playing Tina affected how you see restaurants and what you appreciate about the culinary world?
A: Some things that I never thought about before — everything that it entails; just to get these ingredients, the farmers, the relationship with the local farm-to-table people, their struggles, the folks who are invisible in the kitchen, their dedication, their sacrifices.
I think also as an actor, anything that you have a passion for, it never feels finished. We're all wrestling with these demons, and hopefully, when we're at our best, at 'The Bear' and as a community, is when we're all trying to help lift each other and cover for each other. I had that instinct coming from ensemble theater. I've cleaned toilets at the theater, I've painted sets, I've done all the things that we have to do to keep each other afloat. I understand it on a deeper level now.
Q: You've been acting for more than 30 years — off Broadway, movies, shows. And you're now an Emmy Award-winning actress. 'The Bear' is what catapulted you to stardom in a way you hadn't seen before. Have you been able to fully process the journey?
A: I don't stop processing it. I don't know, maybe 10 years from now, I will be like, 'Oh, yeah, now I get it. I get how epic it was.' It's an experience that feels so huge that I can't really put it in clean-cut categories. The other day, I was walking down the street and a group of young, Asian kids started screaming for me, like squealing, and all I could do was throw them kisses and hearts. That's wild to me, because it's changing for me, the image of who deserves that kind of admiration. And I'm so happy about it. It's just going to keep taking me a long time to let it wash over me — basking still, just putting my toe in the pool of basking. I don't take it for granted.
Q: What can we expect from Tina in Season 4?
A: For Tina, and I feel in general, it is reckoning for everyone. Having their thing that they are going to have to reconcile with and hold themselves accountable for. For me and for all of us, we're at this crossroads and we all are coming to terms with making really clear choices. We're gonna see more of that from Tina.TV for summer 2025: 15 shows coming up, including the return of 'The Bear'