Behind The Scenes: Delving Into The Bear Episode ‘Napkins’ With Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas)

If you haven’t caught up with The Bear season 3, stop reading now. Episode six, directed by none other than Ayo Edibiri (who leads the cast with Jeremy Allen White as Sydney), is entitled ‘Napkins’, and delves into the backstory of Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and how she came to work at Michael’s Italian sandwich shop, The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Recently nominated for an Emmy for her performance in season 2 (one of a whopping 23 nominations across the board), here we delve into the critically acclaimed episode with Liza.

The Bear: Inside ‘Napkins’ With Liza Colón-Zayas

Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina in “THE BEAR” — “Napkins” — Season 3, Episode 6. © FX

‘Napkins’ takes us back to 2018: Tina and her husband David (David Zayas – Liza’s husband in real-life, too) live in a small apartment with their son, Louie. They’re scraping pennies together to get by and struggling with debt – so, when Tina loses her job thanks to layoffs, she’s overwhelmed with worry. What ensues is a job hunt across Chicago, not dissimilar to Sydney’s solo excursion around the city seeking inspiration for future menus at The Bear. This sequence is grey-toned, the storm clouds gather as Tina hands out physical CVs to everyone who will take them; everyone turns her down, either refusing the CV, telling her there are no jobs, or asking her to apply on LinkedIn instead.

At a loss, she stops by The Beef and orders a coffee, which Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) gives her on the house, along with a spare Italian Beef sandwich. She sits in the adjacent room, away from the chaos of the kitchen, to eat. She takes one bite, and begins to cry.

‘That first bite opens up a world that Tina desperately misses in her life,’ Liza says. ‘For a moment, she can’t keep the armour on. In tasting the food and hearing the surroundings, she has this moment where she can’t hold it together and she breaks down.’

Before she was handed the script for ‘Napkins’, Liza says Tina’s backstory was ‘a complete mystery to me’. ‘When I walked into the show, the only thing I thought was, “She’s from New York. She’s a transplant.” That was my only thought,’ Liza says. ‘I did not want to come in with any preconceived notions. I began to learn that her mystery was intriguing. I learned that you could communicate with not a lot of words – and I didn’t want to box myself in. I’ve got amazing writers, so I trust that they’re going to do something that isn’t spoon feeding.’

Spoon feeding it isn’t. As Tina cries, the staff of The Beef are confounded. Could the sandwich seriously be that bad? It’s a light comic moment – a sign the clouds may be parting. Seeing Tina hiding away in the corner, dapping her tears with a paper-thin napkin, Mikey (Jon Bernthal) approaches, sits down, and offers a sympathetic ear. ‘With Mikey’s grand gesture of love and kindness, we see why she loves Mikey so much, why we all love him and why she goes on to grieve so hard,’ Liza shares. ‘He opened up this place for these broken people. He opened up this place for this entire community.’

Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina in “THE BEAR” — “Napkins” — Season 3, Episode 6. © FX

Tina divulges her struggles, and Mikey shares his own: the restaurant is struggling, understaffed and under-resourced; he envies his younger brother Carmy, but is so proud of him for going so far. Tina is similarly jealous of the younger generation snapping up all of the jobs – but she admires their freedom. It’s an incredibly simple yet sensitive scene. ‘I worked hard to really get this situation in my bones,’ Liza says. ‘It was already there, through life [experience] – but I wanted to have options and feel like it wasn’t work. I worked really hard on the text and what the intentions are with the character, but Jon just makes it so easy. He looks into your eyes and he wants to be with you. You clearly are the most important person in the scene with him.’

With Mikey eventually offering Tina a line cook job at The Beef, her future is solidified. ‘With Mikey’s grand gesture of love and kindness, we see why she loves Mikey so much, why we all love him and why she goes on to grieve so hard,’ Liza says. ‘He opened up this place for these broken people. He opened up this place for this entire community.’

As far as the timeline is concerned, we next see her in season 1, episode 1: hardened, walls up, overwhelmed with grief – but a hard worker nonetheless. Eventually, as it is clear Carmy will stay, and as Sydney extends advice to help Tina develop her skills, the walls are gradually chipped away. What’s next for her? ‘As a whole, I want all of us to be able to find our footing and a little bit more sanity, so that we can all continue to thrive,’ Liza shares. ‘If you saw the whole season, it’s sink or swim – but it doesn’t have to be. However, we are who we are, so I just want to see her be able to reach the level that I think we all believe she can achieve. She can get there. That’s the dream.’

‘Napkins’ is The Bear star Ayo Edebiri’s directorial debut, and critics across the board have praised her work – as well as Liza’s performance. What is Ayo like as a director? ‘Similar to how she is as an actor,’ says Liza. ‘Ayo is curious. She’s energetic. She prepares hard. She’s also gentle and loose. On the day, she’s open. She rolls. For this episode, we collaborated a lot. We talked and we shared ideas. Like I said, she prepared hard, so when we were on set, it felt like she had been doing this for years. She was very easy and very gentle – and unless it was something purely technical, she let me do what I wanted to do.’

But Liza never anticipated she would be the focus of an episode of The Bear. ‘Number one, I was surprised that I got an episode,’ she shares. ‘And then, that it was so incredibly beautifully written. I love my backstory. I love how I ended up at The Beef. To be honest, I cried when I first read the script. I did the ugly cry. I’m not going to lie. And then, knowing that my real-life husband [actor David Zayas] was going to play my husband in the episode, it was all too good. It was too, too good. There were a lot of tears.’

And as for the sandwich Liza had a nibble of during filming? ‘It was really tasty,’ she shares. ‘They would take it away every time we cut, so I don’t know how many we got through, but it was not hard. The sandwich was juicy and delicious. It was amazing. It didn’t have peppers, because I don’t like peppers – unless they’re spicy hot. I just wish I didn’t have that chunk of lettuce hanging out the side. Other than that, it was really good.’

(© Kendall Bessent)

WATCH

Liza Colón-Zayas stars as Tina in The Bear; ‘Napkins’ is the sixth episode of season 3. All episodes of The Bear are streaming now on Disney+. disneyplus.com