[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 4 of The Bear.]

Summary

In Season 4 of the FX series ‘The Bear,’ Carmy makes a personal decision that alters his path while the team must adapt to keep the restaurant running.

Sugar, a new mom seeking balance, helps Carmy navigate his emotions and struggles while showing her strength and love.

The dynamic relationships, emotional depth, and complex characters make ‘The Bear’ engaging.

In Season 4 of the FX series The Bear, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) continued to push forward in taking the restaurant to the next level. All the dreams, opportunities, and talent in the world don’t matter if you can’t keep the doors open, and their love for each other won’t stop the countdown clock that serves as a reminder of when their financing will run out. So, while the team, including Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Sugar (Abby Elliott), does everything they can to adapt and adjust in order to make things work, Carmy makes a personal decision that will not only alter his own path, but change things for everyone moving forward. As Carmy’s sister and the manager of The Bear, Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto is a new mom seeking that always elusive work-life balance while still trying to be the Carmy whisperer in an attempt to keep him from retreating from all emotions. She’s also trying to figure out a relationship with their mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) and move passed her grudge against Francie Fak (guest star Brie Larson). Collider got the opportunity to chat with Elliott about all things The Bear and her love for Sugar. During the one-on-one interview, she talked about Sugar’s journey over four seasons, her love for Carmy and devotion to the restaurant, adding a baby to the chaos of the kitchen, why she loves the dynamic between Sugar and Neil (Matty Matheson), finally getting to have it out with Francie, shooting the group scene under the table at the wedding, the poster of Josh Hartnett she used to have on her wall, the real emotions they felt shooting Carmy’s finale decision, and whether there could be a Season 5.
‘The Bear’s Abby Elliott Says That Season 4 Sugar Is Just Exhausted

“She loves the restaurant deeply and wants it to work, but she’s tired of it all.”

Collider: How do you feel about where things are left, by the end of Season 4? How do you feel about where Sugar is, from where she started and after everything that happens this season? ABBY ELLIOTT: She really has had such a journey. When we meet her in the pilot, her primary focus is Carmy’s happiness and getting Carmy to deal with his trauma and what that would look like. Throughout the past seasons, she’s gone through a range of emotions regarding that. She’s annoyed with him. She’s frustrated. She’s sad for him. She empathizes so deeply with him. By the end, she’s just completely overwhelmed with emotion, and there’s relief there and pride there. She is now post-partum. She’s exhausted, on top of it. So much of Season 4 was her navigating her baby, her job, and this new life that she has, which is being pulled in a million directions. She’s exhausted. There’s an overarching theme of just being tired of it all. She loves the restaurant deeply and wants it to work, but she’s tired of it all. There is relief in, “Maybe I won’t have to be tired of it all,” at the end. Sugar’s reaction at the end, hugging Carmy, feels like something she wouldn’t have been able to do in previous seasons. She maybe would have fought more or not understood why she just needs to let him go. ELLIOTT: Absolutely. She’s so invested, at this point. Her love for Carmy, she really puts into the restaurant. Her devotion to the restaurant is almost this outward manifestation of her love for Carmy because she gets something back from the restaurant. By the end, with her hugging him, it really is saying, “Thank you. Thank you for doing this for you. Thank you for doing this for our family. Thank you for doing this for our nuclear family. Thank you for doing this for me as a new mom. Thank you for doing this for your employees.” As actors going through this journey, we all felt the real emotions on that day. I’ve had that a handful of times in my career, aside from the show. It’s such a unique feeling to be in love with the characters and to care about them so deeply that you feel the emotions for them when these things happen. The way we shoot the show is that (creator) Chris [Storer] really doesn’t want it to be over rehearsed. He wants everything to feel so fresh and raw that when we do it on the day, he’s like, “Do we need to run it? I think we could just shoot the rehearsal.” And then, oftentimes, that’s what’s in there because we’re feeding off of each other in real time and feeling these feelings. Can you watch the show and really enjoy it, or are you always nitpicking your own performance and the choices that you make in every scene? How are you with being able to actually watch the show? ELLIOTT: I’m really bad, honestly. With Season 2, I don’t even know that I saw myself on camera, but I did listen to the audio of it. I was still like, “Oh, wait, I could have done that differently,” or “That was my first instinct, but we did another take, right? Why was that on the editing room floor?” It definitely drives me crazy. I’ve seen this season, and I love it. There were elements of it that reminded me of the pilot. The stakes are very high. I love the moment when Carmy calls Sugar to apologize for not meeting her child, and Sugar says, “Hold on, I’m going to put my head back on.” She’s beyond understanding when it comes to him being in his own world. Does it mean that much more to her than she even expresses, to have him actually acknowledge some of his feelings and that there is a life outside of the restaurant. ELLIOTT: I think it means everything to her. I really do. It’s shocking and she’s very hesitant to get too excited. She doesn’t want to let herself be let down by Carmy. She’s watching this behavior as an outsider looking into it and going, “Okay, this is odd. I’m putting my head back on. Here we go. I’m just going to press him.” The writing of that scene was so natural. She doesn’t have a lot of time. The baby needs to nurse. This is where it comes out. And she’s grateful that he called. All she really wants is that call from Carmy. Is it hard to have an emotional moment like that in a scene that’s over the phone, when you’re not even in the room together? ELLIOTT: We do most of the phone calls with the actor on the phone, so in that respect, it’s a lot easier. I’m used to doing phone calls on sets where it’s with the script supervisor. Hearing his voice really helps me get back into their rhythm and their routine. It’s also her reality of being away from the restaurant right now and having to be at home. It kills her to be home and away from the restaurant, and it kills her to be at the restaurant and away from home. That’s the struggle that evert working new mom goes through.

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I love Sugar bringing her child into the kitchen because what way to make a kitchen more chaotic than to bring in a baby. We also see the trust that Sugar has in Marcus because she lets him hold her child, which she won’t allow Neil and Ted to do. What was it like to do the scenes with the baby? ELLIOTT: Marcus is the gentle one. Marcus is the careful one. He’s trustworthy. He’s the first that she brings her to. What I like about that scene is that it gets chaotic, but it’s this peaceful moment of bringing the baby in. It’s quiet. It shows the beauty of children and birth and new life. It brings this calm over the chaos that has been going on in the kitchen. That baby seemed so entranced with everyone and everything there. ELLIOTT: That baby actor was great and so sweet. I think it was a set of twins, and they were both so cute and so easy. When we shot that, my son was nine months old at that point, and that baby actually was probably four or five months. You forget. I was like, “How do I hold a four-month-old?” You’re built to quickly forget those things. I love that moment. It was really sweet. And you see a smile on Carmy that is new for him. He smiles in this very peaceful way. He’s quicker to come around and go to the wedding. He just softens a little more, and that’s a reflection on this new life. It was also shot beautifully. The light in that scene is beautiful. When you’re in it, you don’t think about the light. That’s another reason why you’ve got to watch it back. Do you feel like, at least after working things out with her mother a bit last season and even this season, and dealing with Francie, that Sugar is the most well-adjusted of the family now? ELLIOTT: I do. The stuff with Donna is always going to be there. With the birth episode, “Ice Chips,” and them coming together in that moment, it wasn’t necessarily a resolve or a reconciliation. It was a very subtle mutual appreciation or mutual connection, in that moment. We have both gone through this thing, and are going through this thing, and we both need each other, but that doesn’t mean that things are okay or that the past is erased. It just means, “Okay, we see eye to eye today. I still don’t trust you, but I’m going to move one foot in front of the other.” I think it has brought them closer, or maybe Donna thinks that they’re closer, hence the calls. I do think Natalie and Donna, while they’re different, are a little similar. Sugar is quick to anger, which I think she got from her mother. She holds grudges, like with Francie, which I think is a Donna trait that was passed down. Sugar has tried her entire life to fight all these things that are inside of her. She’s desperate to not be like her mother, but unfortunately, sometimes it comes out. I love how sweet Sugar and Neil are together. What do you love most about their relationship, especially this season? What have you enjoyed about just finding that with Matty Matheson? ELLIOTT: He’s so sweet. I love working with Matty. He’s such a great actor, but he’s so intimidated by the whole process and memorizing his lines. It is a little like, “You okay, bud?” in real life, even though he’s always prepared and knows his lines backwards and forwards. It’s been really fun. Matty is great. In those moments, it’s hard to yell at him. If you think about them as kids, they definitely had this thing happen, time and time again, and it’s just a pattern that they’re repeating. This is the way that they were 15 years ago, in a basement on a beanbag, talking about Francie getting invited to a rager, or whatever it was then. Now that they’re older, they’re still their childlike selves.
‘The Bear’s Abby Elliott Had So Much Fun Working With Season 4 Guest Star Brie Larson

“The blurry vision of who Francie is came into focus, and it was Brie Larson the whole time.”

Image via FX Networks

What was your reaction to learning Brie Larson would be playing Francie. After building up that relationship with so many very colorful words, what was it like to actually get to really explore that dynamic? ELLIOTT: That was so much fun. Like with Jamie [Lee Curtis], I was very intimidated to work with this award-winning actress. She was a dream and then became a good friend. We’re very similar. We grew up pretty similarly. It was wild. It made so much sense. It just made so much sense that it was her. In my head, the blurry vision of who Francie is came into focus, and it was Brie Larson the whole time. Chris and I talked a lot about the wardrobe for the wedding episode. I was like, “It would be so funny if we were in those sweet prairie dresses or pastels while they’re going at each other or put them in similar outfits.” They think the same. Their brains go to the same things. She came in and she was awesome, and we improvised and had so much fun. Was the revelation that they had hooked up something that you do about it, or was that something that came up in the moment? ELLIOTT: It came up in the moment, I would say. That was definitely an on-the-day thing. We played around with varying levels of what that was. Ultimately, it was, “No, it was nothing. She’s my friend. I wasn’t in love with her.” The real thing that happened, that’s described in the show, went down as explained. She was so much fun to work with. Do you think the truce between Sugar and Francie is going to last after this? ELLIOTT: We’ll see with that one. She’s a loose cannon. She gets under her skin. She knows how to. And there are people like that. I have some in my life, and it’s really hard to bite the bullet and take it, but sometimes you’ve got to, for the sake of friendship. I don’t know. Who knows? I could see something going down.

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What was it like to shoot the big group scene at the wedding with everyone under the table, sharing what they’re most afraid of? How long was that table, to fit everyone under it? ELLIOTT: I didn’t know what it was going to look like. The table was big. It was higher than you would think. It was counter height. Going up and down in heels was the challenging part. I love that beautiful scene and being under the table with everybody. That scene really shows what the whole show is about in one scene. To be able to work with Josh Hartnett was very exciting for me. If I had told 12-year-old me that I was working with Josh Hartnett, I would have freaked out. I definitely had his poster on my wall. It’s so much fun to talk to you about this because I haven’t been able to talk about this with anyone yet. That moment is so beautiful and special because you get so much for everyone. You get a sense of who all these people are individually when they’re sharing what they’re afraid of. You also feel the relationships between each other. You get the sense of the love that they have for each other. And we even get to see how the guest stars fit in. ELLIOTT: It was so cool. What I loved about that episode, and I remember having conversations with Chris about this, was that it feels nostalgic. It feels like My Best Friend’s Wedding. It feels like The Wedding Singer. It feels like all these movies that we’ve grown up on and the things that we love about them. It just felt cool and old school, in a way that we don’t see anymore. It wasn’t cynical at all, and that was really special. And then, being able to dance like that, it was like a dream. It was my dream to be in this beautiful wedding setting, to really be dancing to that music with characters that I love and care about. It felt so real. When I would watch movies growing up and would think, “I want to be in that, that’s what I want to do,” it was always something like that, that looks beautiful, that had great music, that was positive and uplifting with people coming together, regardless of their heartbreak. I love that Sugar was the one that tells Marcus that he’s made it onto Food & Wine magazine list for best new chefs. But is there something just particularly fun about walking into a room full of the cast in the kitchen and yelling, “Hey fuckers!”? ELLIOTT: Absolutely! Especially just to quiet the chaos for one goddamn second. That was a blast, to silence them. I love scenes that are one-on-one. To have to speak to a crowd and make an announcement, those scenes freak me out because it feels like me giving a presentation in school, which is my nightmare. So, to have short lines like that, where I get to be in control and be powerful and not have to give a speech, that’s great. Give it to me. I also love that being a mom seems to make Sugar even more of a badass. ELLIOTT: Another thing about the wedding was that I really love that she goes to this wedding and there aren’t these lines about a babysitter. It doesn’t have to be explained. Yeah, there’s a sitter. Sugar is there, enjoying herself with Pete and making amends with Francie, and it doesn’t have to always be, “Oh, she’s a mom now.” She’s a friend. She’s a wife. That was really cool. I have to say that, after Sydney decided to stay, I thought we would at least be in the clear until the end of the season, with all these characters together. I was not expecting the reveal of Carmy leaving the restaurant. Because Sugar is one of a very small group who knows about that, how do you think everybody else will react when they find out? Who do you think is the one that has to go back and tell them all? ELLIOTT: I don’t know. I feel like Richie would be the one. Both of them were quick to tell me when I went outside. That’s a good question. It’s a tough pill for everyone to swallow, so I don’t exactly know the answer to it. I do think that Sugar is capable now. She’s got to calm herself down, though.
Abby Elliott Wants to Keep ‘The Bear’ Going Forever

“In a dream world, I would love to just have it never end.”

Image via FX Networks

Obviously, anytime a show is successful and people love the characters, you just want more of it. There was originally talk of this series possibly being three seasons. Now that there’s been a fourth season, have you had conversations about a Season 5? Do you have any idea whether that could happen? ELLIOTT: I know just as much as you do, honestly. In a dream world, I would love to just have it never end. I love playing this character. I love her. We find out more and more about each character with every episode, and we learn to love them. It’s why we watch TV, to escape. So, yeah, I want to keep it going, forever and ever.

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I feel like everyone would want to be friends with Sugar. ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think she’s a good friend. She’s definitely an empath. She feels a lot, maybe too much sometimes. Don’t fuck with her. No chocolate. No burning the apartment down. Other than that, you’re safe. She’s got your back.

The Bear

Release Date

June 23, 2022

Network

Hulu

Showrunner

Christopher Storer

Directors

Ramy Youssef

Writers

Catherine Schetina, Alex Russell, Karen Joseph Adcock, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, Stacy Osei-Kuffour

The Bear is available to stream on Hulu. Check out the Season 4 trailer: