“The Bear”: Matty Matheson explains why he refused to play a chef in the series

Matty Matheson not only acts as Carmy's childhood friend and the restaurant's handyman, “The bear” , Neil Fak as he is also a professional chef in real life, which earned him the role of producer and culinary consultant on the series.

Matheson's character is one of the only ones who doesn't come close to food in the award-winning FX series. In an interview on the talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! the chef explained that this was one of the conditions for him to accept the role in “The Bear”.

Presenter Jimmy Kimmel highlighted the contradiction: “You are a very talented chef. You're on a show about chefs, about a restaurant. You don’t play a chef on this show.”

“I didn’t want to,” Matheson replied. “[Quando foi convidado] I was like, 'I really wouldn't want to play a chef if you're asking me to do it. It's terrible. I wouldn’t want to do it because it’s stressful’.”

However, the series creator said he had other plans for him, and introduced the character of handyman Neil Fak.

“And I said, 'Perfect. I don't know how to do anything.”, said Matheson.

Matheson also revealed that the rest of the cast used to make fun of him for not being an actor, but that they went out of their way during the series' recordings to help him.

“Jeremy [Allen White] would come and say, 'Hey, let's do the scene outside so you can feel like you understand. I was like, 'What? Now I'm even more scared,'” she joked. And she also said that Ayo Edebiri made him say his lines “randomly” to make sure he had memorized them.

In return, Matty Matheson taught the other actors how to move around the kitchen properly and how to leave their hands.

“The kitchen is a very busy place and people are constantly moving. Finding the cadence of movement constantly when saying your lines is really difficult, I think,” she added.

A third season of “The Bear” should hit streaming in the United States in June this year. Still no confirmed date for arrival in Brazil.