Chefs have always been at the back burner of things, but thanks to The Bear, they are finally getting their moment to shine in the spotlight (thanks to all of the sweat and grease). Even Jennifer Coolidge, who is the epitome of calm, cool, and collected, used to lose it over chefs. There is just something about cooking and being covered in oil that just makes you irresistible.
Coolidge and Jeremy Allen White had a fun interview for Variety, for which they discussed the upcoming season of The Bear. In season two, we are all hoping that Carmy will get a little bit of action beyond the kitchen, though White doesn’t seem to think so. “In the second season, Carmen tries to pursue some joy outside of work, and it doesn’t work out great. These people are working 15-hour days. It didn’t seem real that Carmy could find love.” Even though viewers at home would happily love Carmy, Coolidge knows first-hand how hard it is to be involved with a chef.
“That is actually real,” Coolodge responded. “I think 99% of my jobs were all restaurant jobs. I was a waitress, and I always fell in love with the angry chefs. I don’t know what it is,” Coolidge said. When pressed for more, she explained, “I just like the way they throw the food down. It was so sexy. They’d be like, ‘Take it. Just take it.’ And there’s something about a man who can do something fast.” Perhaps she has yet to see The Menu, but it seems like a lot of people agree that being a chef is the sexy new profession. Being a crypto bro is OUT, being a smelly chef is IN!
Coolidge then admitted that she had pursued many chefs, even with their eccentric behaviors. “There were a lot of chefs in my life. I have to say that when you see that hostile, tough person in the kitchen, it does transfer to real life when it’s out of the restaurant.”
Since everyone and their cousin has been watching The Bear, White admitted that he does get referred to as chef a lot. “We didn’t expect the show to do as well as it did,” he told Coolidge. “We were in New York last summer, and so I was always just walking around. And it happened in a week. All of a sudden, people shouting, ‘Yes, Chef!'”
As for Coolidge’s lines, it seems like fans are finally moving on from making jokes about hot dogs. Now they are screaming about the gays! “I’m so thrilled,” Coolidge said in response to the line from The White Lotus, “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!” becoming a viral moment. Even the Bratz dolls got involved.
She continued, “Mike was very confident about Tanya being pursued by these seemingly friendly gays that seem to be fans of hers. And then Mike was like, ‘We don’t see the gay men as being evil. This is a bad group.’ But it’s interesting because there was a whole group of gay men in New Orleans that went out on Mardi Gras as Tanya. Some of them were on scooters, and they all had ‘These gays, they’re trying to murder me.’ It’s happened in other cities — even in Boston when I did Hasty Pudding. So it really did somehow strike a chord.”
The moment has since gone viral all over and will likely inspire memes for years, if not decades, to come. Now that’s how you stay relevant in 2023.
