(Spoilers for The Bear will be found below.)
The Bear‘s second season keeps the fire burning, both in and out of the kitchen, and a lot of that fire comes from guest stars who either stick around for awhile or pop in for cameos. In Jon Bernthal‘s case, he surprised everyone by showing up as Carmy’s brother, Michael, in first-season flashback mode, and anyone who wants to see him return can rest assured that it happens. And as it turns out, we might have Jon’s former The Punisher co-star, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, to thank for Bernthal’s materialization onscreen.
Moss-Bachrach, of course, portrays Carmy and Michael’s loose-cannon of a cousin, who’s such an a-hole (although a redeemable one) that no one felt too bad when he got stabbed in the butt. And he hails from a vast array of popular series, including NOS4A2, The Dropout, and (of course) Girls, in which he is known for a very salacious scene. Getting back to the subject, though, Moss-Bachrach told CinemaBlend that the production struggled to find the right fit for Michael, and he suggested that if they went ahead and showed Michael, then Jon would be the man for the job:
“They were trying to cast that role Michael for a while. And they asked us, ‘Does anyone have any ideas?; And they asked me and I was like, ‘I don’t think we should ever see him.’ Because when you talk about somebody, and hype them up so much, it’s always a letdown. And then it did occur to me one day, and I was like, ‘Well, I do think Jon is such a, I don’t know, like, charismatic and hilarious, dude that, I was like, ‘he actually would be really great.'”
He does make a fine point here. On, say, Frasier, the looming presence of Maris Crane was one of the funnier parts of the show because she remained unseen. When Michael is spoken of in The Bear, he seems almost fabled in a tragic (due to his suicide) although magnetic way. Pulling off that combination (and without being underwhelming) was surely rough, and very few actors could live up to those expectations. Naturally, though, Jon Bernthal rose mightily to the occasion. And he does so again in The Bear Season 2, which is streaming right now on Hulu.
(Via CinemaBlend)
