SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Season 2 of FX’s The Bear.
Order up! Season 2 of FX’s hit series The Bear has debuted on Hulu, reconnecting with Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and the rest of the crew as they work toward opening their new restaurant.
While the latter half of the season takes viewers back to the fast-paced, anxiety inducing world of the kitchen, the first few episodes take the opportunity to dig deeper into the lives of the other characters, including Lionel Boyce’s Marcus. The first episode gives a glimpse into Marcus’ life outside the kitchen, as he sits next to his ill mother, who is unconscious in a hospital bed.
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Episode 4 dives deeper into Marcus’ story, when Sydney and Carmy send him to Copenhagen to learn from chef Luca (Will Poulter) and return with dessert idea’s for the menu at The Bear. Over the course of the episode, Marcus’ confidence begins to blossom as he realizes he already has what it takes to excel in the kitchen. Once he returns to Chicago, his pride is apparent, especially after he knocks the socks off of Carmy and Sydney with his sweet treats.
By the end of the season, it seems like things are looking up for Marcus after a successful opening night for The Bear. But a few missed called from his mom’s caretaker could mean some hardship is on the way.
Boyce spoke with Deadline about how diving deeper into his character during Season 2 in the interview below.
DEADLINE: I really loved getting to know Marcus more this season. How did you feel when you learned that Episode 4 would be his bottle episode?
LIONEL BOYCE: I thought it was really cool. I was already like loving where things were going, and then I started reading that script, and I was like, ‘This is actually incredible.’ To me, it felt like this was the great next step, because at the end of Season 1 he finds a place for himself in his mind where like, ‘This is my life. This is what I want to do, and I want to go forward with it.’ You see the pieces of it start to bubble up in Season 2. He’s inhaling any information that he can get to keep getting better. So I thought it was cool just to expand and see where his creativity can be nurtured and go further. He meets Will [Poulter’s character Chef Luca], who unlocks things for him in a sense of this is a person who’s gone down the rabbit hole in the quest for greatness. There’s the good and bad and ugly and the great that comes with it…I think Episode 1 of Season 2 starts in the place where Marcus is a completely different person than I thought he was. He has this stuff going on at home, but you realize that he doesn’t share any of this with anybody at work. So you’re like, ‘Okay, well, there’s a different meaning to his smile.’
DEADLINE: From Episode 5 on, Marcus has this quiet confidence and curiosity about him. How did Episode 4 help deepen your performance in later episodes, after getting to spend so much time with him?
BOYCE: That’s the thing that kick starts his arc for Season 2, this journey of learning how to express himself. He went through a test where in Season 1, Carmy and Sydney were encouraging him to do this thing. And he makes something and he’d look to them for their approval of it. So this was the first time where they weren’t there, just him. Early in the episode, chef Luca has a dessert he’s having Marcus try. He’s like, ‘No.’ Marcus is looking to him for approval. It’s not mean. It’s just direct. It’s like ‘No, do it again.’ By the end, he’s by himself just making a dessert, and he doesn’t lean on anyone else’s approval to look for his satisfaction of what he’s trying to do. Through the course of this episode, specifically that last conversation with a chef Luca where’s he’s like ‘How did you get good at this?’ and also sharing the the situation about his mother — I think that unlocked a different thing where it opened him up more in a way that he’d never been open, which allowed him to access a different part of his personality. By the end of that, he goes home and he even tells Syd about the conversation. He talks about feelings there, where he never really talked about his feelings at all in Season 1. That brings about a different kind of confidence within.
DEADLINE: He’s certainly not seeking Carmy and Sydney’s approval in the same way he was before, but what do you think it meant to him for both of them to praise him so highly for the desserts he created?
BOYCE: I think it still feels good. I was talking to a friend about this…If you’re already second guessing something, and someone calls it out for the exact reason that you were hesitant about it, it’ll just shatter and crumble you. But on the other hand, [if you are confident], if they don’t like it, you’re bulletproof. And if you are just already standing on your own two feet, and you feel confident about it, when someone who you respect also gives you the thumbs up, it just means even more. It’s not approval, it’s a different kind of sense of satisfaction. It’s like, ‘Man, I’m glad I shared this and that you appreciate it. And I appreciate you for that.’
DEADLINE: Those kitchen scenes toward the end of the season bring back that chaotic energy from Season 1 that just made it so fun. How do you all rehearse those to get them so perfect?
BOYCE: The first parts were slower, and it felt like making a different show at times. But those last ones, it was like what we did before. It’s a lot of rehearsal, especially in the last episode, it was so technical. We had [culinary producer] Courtney Storer there, who was helping us with the choreography. I think it helps with the performance because everything already feels high stakes, like running a football play or something. You’re like, ‘Alright, we got to do this because if I don’t do this, then this other part falls apart.’ And everything’s going in the kitchen already, So you smell all the food cooking, you have this specific assignment and you hear one of your cast mates yelling. It’s just much easier just to link straight back into the urgency.
DEADLINE: I have to ask about Sydney and Marcus. I think we need a Season 3 if for no other reason than because there’s got to be some resolution there.
BOYCE: [Laughs]. I thought it was such a smart way to go with their story. In Season 1 we didn’t really think about it that much where it was like, ‘Oh, like these two will end up together.’ There was never any conversation or anything like that. I thought it was smart that their chemistry just started to naturally build more and more. And then it’s real to me that workplace relationships can be complicated. One person can have like feelings. It’s like we work together. So many different things going into that, so many different factors. So it’s like, we don’t know what it is… You’re like, ‘I don’t know. Do I like you or are you a friend? I don’t know.’ That’s where the story went where it just was like, ‘Wait, are you saying what I think you are?’ And then he just shuts down and you feel so bad for him, but it also made me laugh. It didn’t make me laugh at the time, but thinking back on it and then when I watched it, I was like, this is funny because this dude just was completely reading this the wrong way.
DEADLINE: I did feel so bad for him. Workplace relationships can be complicated, which we see when Marcus yells at her in the kitchen in the finale. But I am rooting for them.
BOYCE: Yeah, it feels out of place. But also, I think to me, he’s partly hurt. It’s like a cry for help. Because he’s like, this is a person I care about, and I know I just made it weird. I crashed and burned what we had. He was just unloading that. Him yelling is him trying to be direct and head on to fix it but ends up making it worse. But yeah. It took a crackhead to bring them back together.
DEADLINE: That scene is so hilarious. I’m glad they didn’t leave things completely unresolved.
BOYCE: He really cracked me up with that. I love that scene. I remember reading that and Ayo and I were talking about it. She was like, ‘I’m so jealous you get to catch the crackhead.’
DEADLINE: The finale ends with the allusion that something is wrong with Marcus’ mom. We’d need another season to find out more details, but Marcus seems like the type of character to beat himself up for having a moment of joy while not knowing his mom was suffering. What did you make of that?
BOYCE: it ties back into Episode Four, where he was reluctant to go. To me, he wasn’t going to take that trip. he had to convince himself and talk to people who were like, ‘You’d be stupid not to go.’ There’s no true real conflict in that episode, except for internally. That episode is much about like, ‘Hey, you just gotta let the good happen to you sometimes.’ He was rewarded for it in Episode 4. So now he’s, in a sense, being punished for that same thing. So I don’t I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re gonna write it. But I think you’re totally right. He had a great night and he’ll punish himself for not being attentive, like for losing himself. It’s kind of the inverse also of Episode 7, where he discovered his passion. He got lost in his passion to the point where it’s detrimental to the kitchen. This time, he’s just got lost in work and life caught up to him.
DEADLINE: If the series does get renewed, what would you like to see in Season 3 for Marcus?
BOYCE: I think the thing to me that is interesting to explore is just like continuing the journey of aspiring for greatness. It’s just a story of passion. All the writers do such a great job of arcing out specific stories for each character, so I’m excited to see where they’ll take it. But for me, I would love to explore that. This season was, to me, very much him just discovering there’s a path to greatness and seeing what it takes to get there. So I would like to see like him get one step closer to it and see what comes with that — the good and the bad.
The Bear is currently streaming on Hulu.
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