Actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach Returns to ‘The Bear’

To celebrate the fourth season of The Bear https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f?&cmp=7958&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=BM+Search+TV+Shows&utm_term=the%20bear%20season%203&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16903570286&gbraid=0AAAAADoVW80LCuEPMdSnwsQH2a6ww4CCN&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmqPDBhCAARIsADorxIadUBbJijz-JD2nbTUIV2WEewzFF1cGyJq7ntiXwSde8z8PH-AbU8YaAvwLEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds, we return to our conversation with Emmy-winning actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach. At the top, we dive into the making of the hit series (9:22), his unforgettable collaboration with Jeremy Allen White (11:20), and how Moss-Bachrach manages to keep adding layers to his portrayal of Cousin Richie (14:26). Then, he describes the mounting pressures around this new season (19:23), the day he knew he wanted to be an actor (27:35), and his work through the years with actor Jon Bernthal (30:26). On the back-half, Ebon reflects on a formative role as a jazz musician in Warren Leight’s play Side Man (35:34), his ideas about success and living a more balanced life (38:19), his experience playing Desi in Girls (43:33), a philosophy depicted in The Bear (47:35), and the art he hopes to continue making in years to come (50:38). Subscribe to our new YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@talkeasypod. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Lemonada.

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Sam Fragoso?

  Today, my talk with actor Ebon Moss Bakarek. Before he was an Emmy winner, Ebon was bouncing around film, television, and New York theater for the better part of two decades, most notably in shows like Punisher, The Dropout, and Girls, where he played Marnie's pill-popping, guitar-playing boyfriend, Desi. Many critics have hailed his "natural screen presence," a ferocity that makes it impossible to look away, which I think is a fair assessment, but it's not exactly the first thing that comes to mind for me, which is that Ebon has this thing: he can be heartbreaking in

• 1:17Sam Fragoso?

  one moment and then deeply, deeply abrasive in the next. He pivots on a dime. It's like someone who's hugging you in one moment and then decides, for no reason whatsoever, or a reason only understood to them, to give you a gut punch, which is exactly how I would describe his performance as Richie Jeremovich in the hit show The Bear. The show's latest installment, which premiered on June 25th, follows Carmy, Sidney, and the rest of the team pushing forward in the fine dining industry, determined not only to survive, but to take The Bear to the next level. Here's a clip from season four of The Bear.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  That clock is telling you how much money we have left. When that shows zero, this restaurant needs to cease operations.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Okay, buongiorno tutti.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  It's hard and it's brutal, and that's what makes it special. I'm fired up, ready to go. No, same. Showtime. Chef! I get it, you know, chaos and turmoil. But it's a problem when you're letting it fuel you and fuel the food.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  We need to not miss, guys.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  The offerings were substantially different on each visit. Consistency seems to be the weak link here.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Just breathe.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Shh.

• 2:48Sam Fragoso?

  That was from the new season of The Bear. You can now stream all 10 episodes exclusively on Hulu. I sat with Evan last summer in New York City, where we talked about the mounting pressures around the new season, how he manages to keep adding new and nuanced layers to his portrayal of Cousin Richie, the day he decided to become an actor, and most importantly, his ideas around success and how he wants to live a more balanced life in the years ahead. We taped this right after he finished filming season three and four, season four being the one that just came out. And so this new season that you may have just watched was on his mind, and on my mind frankly, throughout this conversation.

• 3:32Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be back next Sunday with a brand new episode. Until then, I really hope you're enjoying your holiday weekend and staying safe and having fun with the people that make you happy. Here is Evan Moss-Bakarek.

• 3:51Sam Fragoso?

  How are you feeling?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  I feel, yeah, I feel pretty good. I feel good.

• 3:55Sam Fragoso?

  What's up?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  I've been looking forward to talking with you and I'm not nervous, although I do, I should. I'm gonna tell you about my dream last night, just to sort of dispel it and just get it out of the way. I had a dream that we were doing the podcast and we were doing, it was, it was taking place on the street for some reason. And I showed up to do the podcast. I had no clothes on. That really wasn't an issue. That didn't really bother me so much, but you were like, listen, you do need to wear some clothing for the podcast. And you gave me a bathing suit. And it was actually a real bathing suit that I have that I bought a few years ago. And since then, I don't really fit into it anywhere else very well. So I tried to zip it up and I can only zip it up halfway and I couldn't get the snaps closed. And I still sort of, my belly

• 4:40Speaker 03

  was over it a little bit. And so, and then I felt like really, really self-conscious that I was wearing this little kind of bathing suit that I don't fit into anymore. I say that not to talk about dreams, but just to maybe like clear the air for my own uncomplicated, basic psyche.

• 4:56Sam Fragoso?

  I actually don't think anyone has set the stage better for a conversation than you just did. I also like that my response in the dream was like, yeah, it's cool. You're here and thank you for being here, but you are gonna have to wear clothes. I still wanted to do the podcast.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, no, you were like, yeah, of course. But actually, it wasn't even you, because in my dream, you were not available. So it was some sort of B-team substitute. I don't know who it was, but I do remember the final straw was that in the middle of the conversation, someone in kind of an intern sort of PA role walked up to him and started asking about travel arrangements and was going through sort of flight options as I kind of sat there. And that was just a further humiliation.

• 5:37Sam Fragoso?

  This is unbelievable.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  So that's it. My cards are all on the table. That's it. That's, that's as complicated as I get.

• 5:42Sam Fragoso?

  I think let's hold the dream and we'll just pick it apart bit by bit throughout this conversation.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is there gonna be a bill at the end of this?

• 5:50Sam Fragoso?

  Almost always. Yeah, that's usually how the show goes. Welcome to the podcast.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

• 6:02Sam Fragoso?

  I have so many questions about The Dream.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  I'm gonna like hear the like, like the nice guitar arpeggios that lead in because I feel like that's always it sets such a nice.

• 6:12Sam Fragoso?

  That's right.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Tone.

• 6:13Sam Fragoso?

  That's gonna play right as you're explaining The Dream.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Great.

• 6:15Sam Fragoso?

  By the way.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 6:16Sam Fragoso?

  So we're here talking in the summer. I'm in New York City with you. A new season of The Bear coming out feels like just a regular part of the summer now. It feels like a staple of it, like it doesn't totally begin until you all drop a new season. How are you feeling about all of this?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  To be honest, I feel a bit nervous. You know, I feel like the show's garnered a lot of love and support from folks and I always just feel like I don't wanna, I don't want people to be disappointed and I'm kind of cautious and hopeful. I also like, I haven't seen it yet. I don't know what's, what's in it, what's not. I have total trust in Chris Dorr and, you know, our editors and everyone, but I'm also like, I've inhaled and I'm like waiting to let my breath out, you know?

• 7:03Sam Fragoso?

  Is that how you felt around the release of past seasons or is this a new thing now that the show is so massively popular?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  The first season, I had no expectations.

• 7:13Sam Fragoso?

  You were like in Greece with your family.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, I was on vacation. This was the third year in a row where like we just kind of like take off to think my kids get out of school and we just like take off.

• 7:20Sam Fragoso?

  Is that where the image of you and the Speedo and the belly hanging over comes from?

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's posit that in, in, in the, in the mind of the listener. Yeah, the first season I was really, I'd, I'd watched it and I thought it was great and I figured that, you know, some people would maybe see it and it just stays sort of, you know, made by some weirdos for some weirdos and it would kind of exist there. And then this crazy sort of populist kind of thing reaction happened to it. And then so the second season, I was like, okay, for sure. We're just gonna get called out as a bunch of frauds, like one hit wonders and we're gonna have like that season two slump. And then people managed to still stick with us for that. And now it's ramped up a little bit for me with the like awards and then like recognition in that, in that sort of form.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  And I'm just like, oh God, I'm, I'm even more nervous about it.

• 8:13Sam Fragoso?

  Last time people saw the show, it was like the friends and family opening of the restaurant.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:18Sam Fragoso?

  Where your character Richie steps up in a big way when Karmie is like locked in a freezer. Which happened accidentally, but maybe subconsciously.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 8:28Sam Fragoso?

  All kinds of things.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 8:29Sam Fragoso?

  Everyone in the kitchen is pushed to their limits that night. With Richie and Karmie, split screen, divided by the freezer, yelling at each other, like yelling the most.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, vile stuff, yeah.

• 8:41Sam Fragoso?

  Vile, painful, abhorrent things you can say, the things you only say in that heated moment.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  What the fuck did you just do? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what you heard. Fucking asshole, what did you just say to that fucking girl? Richie. Richie what? What the fuck did you just say to that girl, Karmie? You shut the fuck up and get me the fuck out of here, please. Oh yeah, I'll get you the fuck out of there, Donna. The fuck did you just say? I've. What the fuck did you just say? Nothing. Richie, what the fuck did you say?

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Yo cousin, I don't understand why you can't just let something good happen for once in your fucking life. What the fuck is matter? Are you fucking kidding me? No, I'm not fucking kidding you right now. Someone's gotta tell you this shit. Fuck you, fuck you. Yeah, fuck me, here we go. Yeah, fuck you. Okay, yeah. You wouldn't have shit without me, so yeah. Yeah, alright, tough karma. You wouldn't be able to pay for your fucking life, or your fucking kid, you fucking loser. You want to see my fucking kid? You fucking loser. Yeah, at least I got a kid, you don't have shit. You don't have fucking shit, where would you want me fucking to put your fucking brother in the ground, you selfish piece of shit? No, you're obsessed with my daddy, that's what you are, you fucking leech. I'm obsessed with you. You're a fucking leech. Yeah, I'm obsessed with you. You fucking leech. Yeah. I should have cut you the fuck out. I fucking love you. I should have cut you the fuck out. You fucking need me. I fucking love you. You fucking need me. Yeah, you need me. Fuck you. You fucking need me, you motherfucker.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Fuck you, shit. Fuck you, it's a fucking shit. Fuck you. Hope you fucking breezed it down.

• 10:15Sam Fragoso?

  On the heels of like all of that intense frustration and rage, how did you begin to turn the page on this story heading into season three?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think we leave like with him getting like broken out of the freezer. Also, there's like these missed calls that Marcus' character has about his mom. Richie and Carmy's relationship is like never been so bad. I think they're not really talking to each other. I don't think anyone, I don't think you can't really look each other in the eyes. I think there's like so much resentment, you know, you can't unhear that stuff. Particularly like with two fairly like unformed, emotionally unformed men, you know, like I think have the words or the means to kind of sit down and hash it out in a safe space or whatever you want to call it, you know, so.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're not talking. I, I think the stuff that Carmy says to Richie is like really pretty nasty, you know? So that's pretty much where we start. That's one thing I like about the show is we just kind of pick up like, you know, 24 hours later.

• 11:18Sam Fragoso?

  But it had been a year since you filmed that.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:22Sam Fragoso?

  So like when you're walking on the set in those first few days, how the hell do you tap back into that feeling that like that raw nerve? Cause you're not rewatching. I know you don't like to, you don't totally rewatch that much.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I do, I will kind of like fast forward sort of through the season just to sort of remember where I am and where my accent's at and all the, you know, just like kind of practical stuff. Also, you know, we'd just been coming through strike. So I hadn't, I hadn't been on a set since we wrapped in 2023 until we got back on to the set of The Bear in February of 2024. So it was like, I always feel a little bit of like the first day of school, even on a show that where I feel like these people are family and I know what the set is and it's a warm, nice place to be. So much of the job of, of acting is being relaxed and being able to be present, obviously, you know, with the folks and the words and everything. And then I felt, um.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  I was nervous. You always feel like, oh God, did I forget how to do this? You know, and then that kind of melts away pretty quickly. In typical like bare fashion, our first day, I think, was like a 25 page long scene in the kitchen with like 10 or 12 people. And so that that has already built in stakes. It's like already very hard and ambitious to do. And I think just the danger of it and the level of difficulty, you just don't have time to indulge yourself with like your own sort of like nerves or anything. It just you're sort of forced into just doing the thing and telling the story. And so, you know, the Nick Cave, the Red Hand Files, like where he answers questions from.

• 13:00Sam Fragoso?

  I don't know. I know him, but.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. So he has, you know, he's like very in in touch with his fans and he's always just trying to make connection between people. That's sort of like what his drive in life is. Somebody asked him about swimming and he's like, he's really into cold water swimming. And he said, when, you know, when after the death, I think the first death of one of his children, he was like walking on the beach in Brighton and the sea was sort of beckoning to him. He wasn't really much of a swimmer, but he sort of he jumped in. And that initial hit of cold water, he said, it was so physically intense that it didn't leave any room for grief. And that's just kind of stayed with me. And that's sort of what's popped into my head now. We're just talking about like this kind of first thing where it's just like, there was no room for like

• 13:45Speaker 03

  second guessing or like self-reflection or anything.

• 13:48Sam Fragoso?

  As people are watching you this season, the idea that relaxation is fundamental to your process in the character of Richie, I think, is a little confusing to people like that. I don't think that would come to mind to most people watching because it's such a manic, frenetic, ferocious performance. When did you figure out that you needed a kind of relaxation to slip into that? And what does that actually look like on a shoot day?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  I think this idea about relaxation is like a slow realization I've had probably over the last 20 years. When I started acting, I definitely had like young ideas about suffering for art and making things very hard. Maybe as a way to feel entitled to this really cool job that I'm lucky enough to have, you know, I feel, okay, if I get to do this, I should really, it should really cost me something in a way, you know, and I've kind of moved away from that, I think, as I've gotten older and being on a set, a TV set or a film set, because there are so many moving parts and so much to kind of tune out, then in order for me to have that kind of concentration, to be able to listen to the person that I'm working with, which is what drives everything, is the people in the scene with me. I have to be calm enough to sit across, like you and I

• 15:01Speaker 03

  are sitting across from each other and listening and talking and exchanging ideas. If I have some sort of personal expectation of a place I need to get to, or some kind of cost that it has to have for me, I just think it's a distraction from the work of the day.

• 15:16Sam Fragoso?

  And muddies the waters.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Richie's definitely a high blood pressure, flushed kind of man, but I do think you need to be in a place to take those things in, you know, I don't think it's all self-generated by him.

• 15:31Sam Fragoso?

  Right. In terms of like presence of mind and the capacity to stay present in a moment with an actor, how do you do that when it's not happening, like when it's not working?

• 15:41Speaker 03

  I just try to double down on the reality in the world, and that's really trying to re-up my focus on my scene partner, or sort of take the physical space around me just to sort of ground myself. And also, I feel like I have to reinvent, in some ways, how I work for every different job. But one thing that does come back to is like taking attention off of myself, because I think when you truly do that, that's when surprises can happen in a scene, and you always will have some idea of how the scene is going to shake down, but that's often just taken from the text, and it's so much more interesting for it to diverge from that.

• 16:18Sam Fragoso?

  It makes total sense that you would have to change your approach depending on the personnel and the set. But I'm fascinated with these two seasons you just shot, because to make a movie, to make a show, it like takes a village.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  100%.

• 16:32Sam Fragoso?

  And there's a tight-knit family that you and everyone in Chicago has created.

• 16:39Sam Fragoso?

  But like you said, when you first started filming, like no one had heard of the show. No one knew they needed a show set in an original beef restaurant. Like, that wasn't part of the equation. And so because of that, the crew did make the show like an indie film on a budget of an indie film. But now I have to imagine some of that has changed because you all have now shot two seasons back to back.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 17:02Sam Fragoso?

  Which is like something that never happens unless there's scheduling conflicts, economic pressures, or like an interest from a network that says, we need and want more of this. All things that have very little to do with making art. And so how does that impact the nature of the set and the day to day work that you all are trying to do?

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, yeah, I mean, I think the first season was very much like an independent movie. I mean, the size of our crew, our schedule, you know, we always had our backs against the wall. The way the studios work, it's not like you gave us this season. It cost us, I don't know what it cost, 10, 20 million dollars or something. And now it's a big hit. And so now we're going to give you 200 million dollars.

• 17:44Sam Fragoso?

  Of course.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Now they're like, oh, let's give you like, like, can we do it for less? Our crew hasn't grown, you know, but it's still the same amount of folks.

• 17:52Sam Fragoso?

  So the conditions actually didn't change at all, even though you filmed two seasons back to back?

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I mean, when we went in to start season three, we weren't going in to make season three and season four. But it swelled and some of our episodes got quite big and over an hour. And so some of these episodes were like splitting, you know?

• 18:13Sam Fragoso?

  This is insane to put out all at once.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  It's like, like cells, like, kind of like, what is that mitochondria? Like, I don't know, they like, they split into two. And I was like, you know what? We're going to actually turn this into two seasons. And now we're going to be making 15 or 16 episodes instead of 10. But we're going to do them all at the same time. I would come in in the beginning of the day and work on a scene from late in season four, and then shoot a scene from early in season three, and then shoot a scene from late in season three. So it took an enormous amount of just kind of like war room, like post-its and sort of, you know, me, I, Jeremy, we're all in a constant state of reading through the seasons.

• 18:48Sam Fragoso?

  And reorienting yourself.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, and just sort of trying to remember where your person was at in this very kind of emotional roller coaster of opening a restaurant. Yeah, emotionally, practically, what is going on? Like, what does the menu look like now? Like, where do the napkins? Like, what's the configuration of the tables in the dining room? Yeah, it became a very thrilling slash confusing shoot.

• 19:14Sam Fragoso?

  But within the frame, on any typical day of shooting, did you feel like the essence of it, the heart of it, that remained?

• 19:24Speaker 03

  For me, it really hasn't changed. In many ways, the third season is a return to sort of what, you know, I think that the show took a turn in the second season. The first season, we see these people together. To me, it was always a show about like found family. I thought the restaurant sort of setting was almost incidental. You know, to me, it reminded me of Taxi.

• 19:43Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  You know, like these sort of people who didn't really fit in anywhere else and they're all sort of thrown together in this place. In this place, it was a beef restaurant.

• 19:50Sam Fragoso?

  To me, it always felt like it's a surrogate family, the same way you think of Boogie Nights or something like that.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And then in the second season, we sort of go off and sort of explore people's inner lives and sort of what, where they're coming from when they're not at the restaurant a bit. That, to me, felt a little bit like taking, I don't know, like a departure from the stuff that I really loved about the show, which was just being in this small space with everybody, with a bunch of like great actors, with incredible writing, and just ping ponging around, letting the energy kind of like zip around the room and sort of sweating through these days with these lovely cast and crew. And then now in the third season, we're sort of all thrown back together. And so for me, it was just like the band is back together. And that was the most inspiring part of the show.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  These scenes with lots of moving parts and lots of moving people and talking over each other. And it's just, it's just so energizing and volatile and yeah, thrilling.

• 20:47Sam Fragoso?

  I think what you're trying to tell me is that if any bit of the show felt a little more comfortable and at ease in season two, we're fully back in the panic attack of season one and season three now. I think the whole show kind of feels like a panic attack. Do you ever like feel overwhelmed doing it?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  I would get overwhelmed sometimes about the amount of pages we would try to shoot and the ambition of the scenes, like in terms of coverage and things, you know, it's a very untraditionally shot show. Like there's very rarely sort of just traditional coverage, which kind of gives the editor like freedom to sort of like take bits and pieces or kind of get locked into certain setup. So that would be sometimes not overwhelming, but just kind of give me pause and make me sort of double down, do my work a lot harder, just like learning lines and, but. I know I never felt overwhelmed or like caught up in the energy of the scene so much where it's like I needed to go outside and you know, or like, or go back to meditate

• 21:49Speaker 03

  or you know, listen to put my headphones on and like, listen to some, I don't know, John Schofield or whatever.

• 21:53Sam Fragoso?

  Is that your method?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I don't know why he popped it to my head, Pat Metheny, I don't know, some kind of like calming guitar stuff.

• 22:00Sam Fragoso?

  You dialing up the Headspace app?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Andy.

• 22:04Sam Fragoso?

  It's Andy.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  It's Andy.

• 22:06Sam Fragoso?

  I like Andy.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  He's got a great voice.

• 22:09Sam Fragoso?

  He's got a great voice.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:10Sam Fragoso?

  As someone who has to do a lot of talking into microphones.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:14Sam Fragoso?

  I appreciate his voice and I appreciate the way he does it.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's meditation with like a lowercase m.

• 22:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:21Sam Fragoso?

  You know, because the show is so successful and you've won this Emmy and a lot of articles have come out about you. And one thing that I noticed is that in every article.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh.

• 22:33Sam Fragoso?

  They frame you and your story and your trajectory in basically the same way, which is like this. Ebon is following a kind of redemptive arc. At 40 something years old, after decades of being a working actor, he's finally arrived. His big break has finally come. His patience has finally paid off. And it strikes me that this kind of framing, and it happens in every interview.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:03Sam Fragoso?

  Has a way of disqualifying and discrediting your past.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  My life.

• 23:08Sam Fragoso?

  That I find really bizarre and completely uninteresting.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  I mean, I get it. It's a convenient, easy sort of like narrative to slip into, dovetails with Richie or something. I find it lazy. It's frustrating because you're right, it does sort of like discredit and also it just, what I don't like about it is it projects onto me this sort of like desire for fame or like mass recognition, which was truly like never something I was pursuing. And it just, to me, it really like just cheapens the things that are my goals and my priorities in my life, you know, and I've. I understand because of the nature of my job and the nature of our like fame obsessed world that we live in now, but I don't want to get glummed into all that stuff.

• 23:52Sam Fragoso?

  Right. There's an assumed like yearning for something.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 23:57Sam Fragoso?

  That my understanding is that you'd never had that. So I want to actually talk about the things that matter to you. 1995.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 24:06Sam Fragoso?

  You're a freshman at Columbia.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 24:08Sam Fragoso?

  You had just spent a childhood in Amherst, Massachusetts, where, quote, "The self-loathing and feeling like I'm nobody special was baked into me good."

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's like a Massachusetts thing. I feel like that's like echoes of like puritanism, you know, that seeps in that like in modern day terms, it's just like the mass hole, you know?

• 24:27Sam Fragoso?

  You land an apprenticeship at Williamstown Theater Festival alongside actors like Hope Davis and Campbell Scott. Once you were in the theater at the festival, was it love at first sight? Or when did you go, oh, this is something that I haven't felt before?

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. So my freshman year of college, I took an acting class and I did a play. I think I was in a comedy improv group and I sort of was like, wow, this is like really fun. I want to explore this a little bit further. I want to dip my toe into this. And so I was an apprentice at the Williamstown Theater Festival that summer, right before then my first sort of my college girlfriend dumped me. And so I went out to Williamstown, you know, with, like, with a he- heavy heart, you know?

• 25:13Sam Fragoso?

  Like the day before?

• 25:14Speaker 03

  No, I would say like a few weeks before, but I was like, I was pretty sad. So I went into this place.

• 25:19Sam Fragoso?

  You're going through it.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Emo, moody, going through it. And then it became this, I don't know, transformative experience. I went up there to be around theater and to see great stuff and to work on sets and to take some classes. And I wound up getting a part in a play, the Sidney Kingsley play, with all these incredible actors because they needed a bunch of young guys to be like these teenage sort of dead end kids.

• 25:41Sam Fragoso?

  You're like, I'm a teenager. I just got my heart broken.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So I wound up with these incredible actors and I saw what it was like for people to actually do this job without it being like a lark, you know, it was, it was the main thing in their lives. And the seriousness with which they went about doing it and the questions they asked and their devotion to sort of telling the story and fleshing it out was incredibly exciting.

• 26:03Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. What did that seriousness look like?

• 26:06Speaker 03

  It looked like a lot of asking questions. I was seeing these actors really try to figure out what was going on with the people that they were portraying. And really fighting for them in an earnest way and really trying to serve this story, but like with a

• 26:19Speaker 03

  a dedication that I didn't, had never really occurred to me.

• 26:21Sam Fragoso?

  Right. You said in one interview that it was there at that festival that you realized, oh, this is a craft. Like this is something I'm not good at, but I could incrementally over time get better at.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can at least try. Like there is a sort of path here and there is a sort of gauntlet thrown down that I can sort of strive to, to get to. And also it became clear to me that this was something that I could try, make a life out of, and I would never actually really get there.

• 26:49Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean by that?

• 26:51Speaker 03

  I just think that there's always work to do and there's always room to improve. But like when I've worked on a play, like I think maybe the longest run of a play I've done is maybe like 110 shows. After every show, this went well, but I really want to work on this tomorrow. And I think that that is true and indicative of the nature of pursuing an art form or pursuing, you know, a craft. The more you do it, sort of the more you realize you don't know so much.

• 27:16Sam Fragoso?

  You know, when you were in that early production with Hope Davis, you said you noticed that she was fighting for her character in a way that you hadn't really seen before. And last night I sent a text to John Berenthal. And I asked him, what's something about Evan that I should know that I probably don't? And he was like, I'll tell you. He sent me a text at like 6:48 in the morning the next day. And he said, uh, my first job was on a play called The Fifth of July. By Lanford Wilson. This was in 2003 and he was an understudy for you.

• 27:53Sam Fragoso?

  And he said it was his off-Broadway play. And right away, I noticed, Ebon, he fights for his art. It's tremendously vital for him to be honest and honor his characters while never being selfish, showy, or cruel in how he fights for them.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Oh, that's nice. I think it's really cool to give voice and embody a character that maybe exists or maybe doesn't exist. It's something that came out of a playwright's mind. Or maybe it's, you know, somebody, a historical figure who is not around to sort of fight for themselves. And I think it's, to me, it's very exciting to think about the spirit of something and having the spirit sort of come into you. And or you pick it up and you sort of carry it for a little while and you're its protector and you're its advocate. It feels heroic in a way to me. And it's also nice because you can kind of put your own stuff aside and say, okay,

• 28:53Speaker 03

  for right now, I'm carrying this character. I'm carrying this idea, this person, this spirit of something, you know? I find that really, um, yeah, exciting, really cool.

• 29:10Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, we talk girls, the bear, and a whole lot more with our guest, Ebon Moss Backrack.

• 29:19Sam Fragoso?

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• 31:28Sam Fragoso?

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• 32:06Sam Fragoso?

  When you're like in your early twenties and you're performing in off broadway shows.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  And read in like regional plays and stuff.

• 32:12Sam Fragoso?

  Right. And you have some bit parts in movies and TV and stuff.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:16Sam Fragoso?

  Did you have that understanding of what you're doing then? That it was like a spirit coming through, like the metaphysical part? Like at 24, 25, did you start to figure that out around then?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I think that was active, but it's been crystallized more for me now. But I'll tell you, like, early on, one of my first jobs was there's a play called Sideman by Warren Leight, which is about these jazz sidemen and they sort of were never the headliners. The central character of the play is this narrator, who's the son of one of these sidemen. And he has a lot of direct address stuff to the audience, talking about jazz and endangered nature of this art form. These clubs are closing, there's no more room in the country for this medium. You know, it's very hard for these guys to make a living. And this is something that really resounded with me. I was a big jazz fan and I played some jazz, like in high school, I had a jazz band.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  And my dad had a music school. And I saw a lot of great players and composers really struggling to sort of make a way in a world that was not really into them anymore. And so I was like, I want to go do that. And so I went to San Jose, California to do this play because it was very important for me to tell 200, 300 people that these guys are dying. This is not happening. This is not viable anymore. There's, you know, and I guess that urgency and that sort of need to champion, I think that that was probably the beginning of this thought that I'm sharing with you now.

• 33:49Sam Fragoso?

  The idea of you as an advocate, I love that.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  It's like magic. It's like animation. It's you're animating something. And I think that that-

• 33:57Sam Fragoso?

  It's a person.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's almost like reverse because it's like you're not like putting your thing into something. It's something coming into you rather than you bringing the brooms to life or something.

• 34:07Sam Fragoso?

  This is hilarious to me that in 2003, you're in this play with a young Bernthal. And in that same year, you're doing an interview where someone poses a question to you. They say, "Do you want to move to Los Angeles?" And you say flatly-

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Fuck no. What did I say?

• 34:24Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  I just said, oh.

• 34:25Sam Fragoso?

  I've been doing okay just being here. I like being able to do plays and I like the people in the city. That line, to me, is kind of the essence of where we started.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 34:35Sam Fragoso?

  This conversation of like, all the press around the show, all the narrativizing of you and your story. The reason it reads wrong, the reason it reads false, is because it's not okay with just being here. Working moment to moment in a production where no one's making money, staying up on hour seventeen trying to figure it out. Why was it so okay for you when it's not okay for so many other people?

• 35:02Speaker 03

  I really, I've really enjoyed my life, you know, like in those early days, I would do a couple of plays a year. Maybe I'd get a job on like a, a big movie for like a little bit and then do a few indie, you know, like these were like different times. And I was very happy. It was the early 2000s in New York. I was like living in Brooklyn. It was like, it was great. I was having a lot of fun, you know?

• 35:25Speaker 03

  And New York is, and I've been, I've been here, you know, now I've moved here 30 years ago. And yeah, I've, I've been very lucky to have been pretty happy. And then I met, I don't know, that was, so that was 2003, what you're saying, like my first daughter was born in 2006.

• 35:40Sam Fragoso?

  Right. You were 28, like 29 years old.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, something like that.

• 35:44Sam Fragoso?

  And that was when your father had you as well.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 35:47Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. Did knowing that your father had you at that age, make you go, I can do this?

• 35:53Speaker 03

  No, it wa, I mean, that would be a level of kind of awareness and reflection that I don't think I've ever really had. I felt, I felt super hard for a woman. We talked about having a family. That happened pretty quick. And as anyone have had, babies can tell you like, that can pretty much take over your life, you know? And. We're both like deeply impractical sort of romantic people.

• 36:20Sam Fragoso?

  She's an excellent photographer.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  She's a brilliant artist and I don't know, we just fell in love and decided to try to have a family and then that happened really quickly and then that just kind of became the focus of my life. And I think like a lot of thirties, especially like as a man becomes a sort of grounds for achievement. It becomes like career Olympics, kind of. And I was still ambitious and still wanted, you know, I would get depressed when I wasn't working. And I felt like acting and being on sets or being in a rehearsal room or on stage was very important to me. I needed that still as part of my life and it was and it remained. But this whole like idea of making it for me was just like paying the bills and taking care. So we can just live our like kind of little lives out in Brooklyn. And it's kind of been that way, you know, since.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  That kid that we had in like, whatever in 2000, it was like her last day of high school the other day. It's crazy. I don't know. I get like worried that this feels like spun or something, but I'm so grateful for the amount of time like that I did prioritize that, like that I did spend so much time not worrying about things or trying to go out. And, you know, God, get that, get that next thing. But like, but with, with Sasha, you know, and Mary, my daughters and Yelena. And I don't know, I feel like truly, truly blessed or lucky that I got to spend so many incredible years with these like amazing girls and women. But this is also like not to say that there were, you know, I mean, I had like definitely tough days, months, years,

• 37:51Speaker 03

  struggles and things.

• 37:52Sam Fragoso?

  Your parents helped babysit, right?

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, my parents have been great about that, like times when Yelena's had to go out of town for a shoot and I have to go out of town for a shoot or something. My parents have always been really, really supportive of helping out. They live, you know, Amherst is like, I don't know, three and a half hours away. So they've been incredibly supportive and really incredible about helping us out.

• 38:13Sam Fragoso?

  I was thinking about your dad, who played jazz music and taught it and definitely wanted you to play the piano, and you did play the piano.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 38:21Sam Fragoso?

  And I've heard you say in the past, like, I did it, but I hated it.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  That's not quite true. I hated it initially and practicing always was kind of a bummer, often because it was imposed by my dad or some my own personal sort of feelings of obligation, but just something that was passed on his mother, my grandma was really, she was like a great pianist, you know, so I felt like I had this sort of had to carry this mantle kind of away. For me, piano became really interesting when I started to play with other people. Like, when I was maybe 14 or 15, I started to play jazz and sort of formed a little band with some friends. And then when it became this thing joined together.

• 39:00Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  That's when I was like, oh, wow, this is good.

• 39:03Sam Fragoso?

  When it became a surrogate family.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:05Sam Fragoso?

  Like improvising together on a stage.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, when the energy, like this cumulative thing, that's like bigger than the sum of the parts, like, it's just like this, this energy that you create together, it just was like, I don't know, it was like a pre-verbal way of communicating with people that was so rad to me.

• 39:22Sam Fragoso?

  I bring that up because I wonder, like, now that you're a dad, how do you talk about pursuing artistic endeavors to your kids?

• 39:30Speaker 03

  I don't know, with my kids, I think we just kind of expose them to the whole thing, the frustrations and the victories and they, you know, they, they just kind of see, you know, I mean, for the last many years, it's been fine, but like, you know, certainly my older daughter remembers when, you know, we didn't have much money and then we were struggling a bit. But we don't sit down and talk about realizing your artistic path and everyone reads like, you know, you talk about the right side of the brain.

• 39:55Sam Fragoso?

  I think like the thing we keep coming back to is gratitude and that you're like grateful for your family and also having now made this new show. And I wonder, when it comes to girls, when you look back at that chapter, what comes to mind? Like, what do you hold on to still?

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Well, there's a lot of really nice distressed John Varvatos pieces that I got to wear. You know, one of my first days on that show, we were shooting this scene where...

• 40:25Speaker 03

  My character shows up at a party, like my introduction to the show is I meet Adam Driver's character at an audition and we sort of hit it off and he takes me to a party and and we shot for a couple of days at the Gramercy Hotel and it did really feel like at that point, kind of a family. And I didn't realize that this was not the way they normally shoot, but it was like everyone was together. This was maybe the one time in the show where it was like truly everyone in the cast, that that core cast was together. And we would shoot in one suite and another suite would kind of like hang out and we'd all be like listening to Patti Smith and like, you know, and, and now it's like, wow, this is really, really cool. Like this is like a whole vibe here. But um, that was, that was just that one episode. And then like, I never saw Zashamamad ever again.

• 41:12Sam Fragoso?

  So it was familial for a beat?

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was like a really nice, my, my entry into it was like, was, was, yeah. Really comfy.

• 41:22Sam Fragoso?

  Like when people talk about your character in it, or when they talk about Richie, they use terms that are pretty tough. I'm sure you've heard them all at this point.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  I've definitely have, yeah.

• 41:33Sam Fragoso?

  Do you want to power rank your favorites for me?

• 41:36Speaker 03

  What do we have? You know, with Desi, there was a lot of douche, you know, which I, you know, sure, I guess it feels like you could use your imagination a little more. Yeah, these guys are like problematic, you know, people like to get thematic and talking about these guys about like masculinity and talk about, you know, for me, like I don't think about things in such sort of big thematic things. I really just think about the person. I did think that Desi was a very sort of funny depiction. I was always really tickled by him. He felt like a big baby to me. A little bit of this kind of folksy wisdom and a really well put together veneer, like very cultivated.

• 42:20Sam Fragoso?

  What was the spirit reference for that character?

• 42:24Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't know, like, maybe like.

• 42:26Sam Fragoso?

  Anyone walking around like Greenpoint or something like that?

• 42:28Speaker 03

  I'm thinking like a little Cocapelli, you know, like this, the, you know, familiar with the?

• 42:34Sam Fragoso?

  What's that?

• 42:34Speaker 03

  Cocapelli is like from like the southwest. It's like the, the god who like his, his nose turns into like a little flute. He's like, exists in turquoise on a lot, a lot of belt buckles. But I saw a lot of people, you know, New York, LA, like these cities, like people come and reinvent themselves. And certainly like in Brooklyn in the nineties and two thousands, like there was a lot of pretty funny, a lot of dudes with a lot of accoutrement, you know? It was fun to kind of, you know, lampoon them a little bit.

• 43:03Sam Fragoso?

  Uh, there's been like people rewatching Girls and part of it is there's people in their thirties that are like, oh, I now see myself and have more empathy for myself, having lived and fucked up in all the ways that the characters fuck up. I think same is true for Richie, like people love him and the characters of the bear because of how they fall short.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, who wants to watch a show about a bunch of like sort of well-adjusted people that have like arrived and have done their work? I mean, that's just like, that's not, that ain't the show that anyone wants to see. For me with Richie, it was always just like this guy's at a really tough place in his life and he's struggling and everything's changing around him. He doesn't see a place in this, in this world, that's in this home anymore, you know? And so it allowed me to think that these circumstances can hold some extreme behavior because he is in many ways like fighting for his life. And, you know, you can kind of eschew politeness and sort of socialized behavior because, you know, it's a life or death struggle for him. And that for me is like, an actor is like super interesting because then you can just fight as hard as you can fight and you don't need to worry about, you know, like being liked.

• 44:09Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. You know, it being a matter of life and death, when we get to the end of season two and as we enter this season three, there's a scene towards the end of episode nine, I think it is, right before the restaurant opens for friends and family. And it's between Oliver Platt and Jeremy Allen White, where he's talking about.

• 44:29Sam Fragoso?

  About the Cubs and unforced errors and what's known as like the Steve Bartman game, but really should be known as the Alex Gonzalez game, which I am still traumatized by as a lifelong Cubs fan.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Is that where the guy caught it from the?

• 44:44Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the real play happened, the unforced error happened on the field, like, you know, two innings later. But there's part in that scene with Oliver Platt and White that I wanted to watch together for a moment.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  This business, like a lot of businesses, it sucks, right? But this one sucks extra hard because the profit margins are nonexistent, right? And unforced errors, trust me, they're contagious. So you don't have the luxury of hiding behind little Stevie Bartman. It is all you. It's all you, right? So you gotta put your fucking head down, you gotta focus, and you gotta live this shit and nothing else.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  I actually want this place to work for you, buddy, I really do. I don't wanna, I don't wanna take it from you, I don't wanna knock it down. I will take it from you, I will knock it the fuck down, I don't wanna. But if it's gonna work for you, you gotta give up every fucking minute, every drop of blood you have. You cannot take your eyes off this thing.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  In return, you know what you're gonna get? Nice, sharp kick in your little nuts daily for the foreseeable future.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  How's that all sound to you?

• 46:00Sam Fragoso?

  What do you think, watching that?

• 46:01Speaker 03

  He's so good.

• 46:02Sam Fragoso?

  Oliver Platt?

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:03Sam Fragoso?

  Unbelievable.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:05Sam Fragoso?

  When he says, "You gotta give it every fucking minute you have, every drop of blood you have." Like, the doggedness he's talking about, the blinders that he's recommending, that you need to shut out the world around you and essentially everyone in it to succeed, to make good work. And thinking about how you've arrived at making good work, it doesn't sound like that philosophy at all.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's a very American notion of a life. You know, you look at those characters, Jimmy seems like he's got a lot of issues, and Carmy is like miserable. I mean, that's not the people I'm gonna look at to base my life on.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  There's a lot of wisdom in our show, but there ain't a lot of like, you know, there's not a lot of winning in that show. You know, there's like, people are wrong a lot. Everyone on that show is pretty unhealthy with a couple of exceptions. I don't know. Marcus seems like he's got some stuff figured out.

• 47:03Sam Fragoso?

  That's why I wanted to hold, because of what we've been talking about, the contrast between those two.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this idea of like, putting the blinders on and going into the tunnel and just bang, and bang, and bang, you know, yeah, I think that probably works for some folks. That's just never been for me. You know, I also think that that is symptomatic of like, that's like a very kind of oversimplified romantic idea in a way of like, a young person, certainly like a young man, of this idea of just pushing hard, hard, hard, hard, and getting the thing. You know, I'm like, middle aged, 47 now, and I, I might have even agreed with that at one point, but to me now, I can see, at least for me, there's no longevity in that.

• 47:45Sam Fragoso?

  There's no longevity in making work like that.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. So for my job, if I just stayed in a theater and just read plays and worked on things, or like, just was in on a set and just lived and breathed, it would be at the expense of the outside world. And I think I need to be in the world to feed whatever I'm trying to do and to feed my life so that I can, in turn, put it back into my work. So I think closing the blinds and going into that tunnel is really like, um, like amputating so much of a life experience, which is necessary to actually do the job. I think that's one of the reasons I've lived here for so long is because New York thrusts the world, the

• 48:31Speaker 03

  beauty and the ugliness and the, all of it on you. And you're just, you walk out the door and it's all there. You know, you brought up Hope Davis, and I think I probably talked about this before in interviews. But in that first play, you know, she was so kind to me. And I remember one afternoon, I was telling her, I was like, you know, this has been so inspiring, this experience being here with you. I think I'm gonna go back and I think I'm gonna be a theater major and I'm gonna study theater. And she said, Evan, please don't do that. Like, just study whatever, but like, learn to be a person. Don't just be an actor, you know, like, be out in the world and so that you can reflect what's out there, you know?

• 49:03Sam Fragoso?

  Learn to be a person before you start playing other people.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, be like a vital, curious, intelligent, sensitive member of society.

• 49:11Sam Fragoso?

  I'm thinking now, like, when it comes to playing people, you've won this Emmy for playing Richie and then like, distilling life so beautifully. Our whole conversation has been a little bit about trying to find the essence of the thing that matters. And the thing that matters is making something and mining a story and creating something out of nothing with a surrogate family that you've created. Can you walk me through what one of those days looks like for you?

• 49:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I just, this is like fresh in my head because the last two days I was just over in Times Square and the fourth floor of this building.

• 49:43Sam Fragoso?

  Something good happened over here?

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue, directly across the street from Madame Tussaud's. I was in there like a workshopping a play, you know, a real like work in progress with a director and the writer and a bunch of great actors. And just sort of reading this thing and going through it and trying to figure out how it needs to grow, where its strengths are, what needs to happen. So it can get to, it's not even at a first draft, so it can get to a place where then it can begin to have a life. That's definitely like, I will take a rehearsal room on 8th Avenue and like some shitty coffee any day over that stuff. Like, that's much more exciting. Yeah, that was, that was my last two days and I felt great.

• 50:26Sam Fragoso?

  You know, when you were at that festival and you were with Hope and Campbell and all them?

• 50:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:30Sam Fragoso?

  And you realize, oh, this is a craft that I could get incrementally better at.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:35Sam Fragoso?

  Two things, do you think you've gotten better? And are you still interested in figuring out how to do this in new and interesting ways moving forward?

• 50:45Speaker 03

  I think I've gotten better and I'm incredibly motivated and excited to keep going. I feel so fortunate that I get to do this job and I get to work with all kinds of people all over the world and I I'm as inspired by my job and by this work now as I was whenever that was in 1995 or 1996.

• 51:05Sam Fragoso?

  Does that seem like almost impossible to believe?

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. It sounds cheesy to me, but it sounds kind of.

• 51:14Sam Fragoso?

  It's the most sentimental thing you've said.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but no, I truly, I truly feel that way, you know? But that's always immediately followed by feelings of gratitude. You know what I'm saying?

• 51:26Sam Fragoso?

  The last thing for us, we started with the dream that you had.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:30Sam Fragoso?

  In the dream where you're coming on the podcast.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:33Sam Fragoso?

  How did that podcast episode end?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  I think it sort of ended with the flight options for the host. The second indignity that I suffered in that dream was there was a live keyboard player who was playing these kind of transitions and segues, really that kind of groovy organ thing. And I said to the host, who was sort of you, sort of somebody else, I was like, man, she's amazing, she's so good. And then when I turned around to sort of give her some props, she wasn't there. I don't see her now.

• 52:07Sam Fragoso?

  She's not here now.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  No, she's not here.

• 52:09Sam Fragoso?

  I hope you haven't suffered too many indignities in our time together.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  No, man, it's been a pleasure.

• 52:13Sam Fragoso?

  Evan, lovely to officially meet you.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you so much.

• 52:16Sam Fragoso?

  Best of luck with the new season.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 52:54Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show.

• 52:57Sam Fragoso?

  If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. I want to give a special thanks to speak to the teams at Oriole Company and FX, Jon Bernthal, Sarah McCray, and of course, our guest, Evan Moss Bakarek. Season four of The Bear is now available to watch on Hulu. To learn more about Evan and his work, visit our website at talkeasypod.com. For more episodes with other great actors, I recommend Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, and Jon Bernthal. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Talk Easy

• 53:39Sam Fragoso?

  Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy, or the vinyl record we made with writer Fran Lebowitz, you can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. If you'd like to join our mailing list, drop us a line at [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Kevin Core and Adam Jamal and mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was recorded out of CityVox in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shannon. Original photographs today come from

• 54:20Sam Fragoso?

  Jenna Jones. Research assistance from Anna Faray-Montino. This episode was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media, and I'm Sam Ficocca. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with a brand new episode. Until then, happy holidays to you and yours. Stay safe, and so long.

• 55:01Speaker 05

  History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating so you know how much weight to give the source and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it. The Nobel Peace Center called it "an excellent way to stay informed,

• 55:43Speaker 05

  avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview." So go to groundnews.com/rz. That's G-R-O-U-N-D-N-E-W-S.com/rz for 40% off unlimited access vantage plan. Get it yourself or gift it to someone who'd rather know than not. Use my link, groundnews.com/rz, so you get the discount and they know I sent you. If you're a fan of learning all sides of history, then Ground News is for you. One more time, groundnews.com/rz.

• 56:22Speaker 06

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 56:30Speaker 07

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 56:33Speaker 06

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 56:36Speaker 07

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 56:38Speaker 06

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 56:44Speaker 06

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.