Ayo Edebiri Says Directing ‘The Bear’ was like ‘Making a Venn Diagram Out of a Thousand Circles’

When Ayo Edebiri found out she would be directing an episode of “The Bear,” she recalls showrunner Christopher Storer telling her: “You really get to play here, so feel free to do that.”

Her first stop was the Directors Guild of America, where she enrolled herself in a class for first-time television directors led by Paris Barclay, Keith Powell, and Dr. Valerie Weiss (“Three legends incredibly giving and helpful,” Edebiri told IndieWire). In a group that included writers, actors, producers, and editors, the class was walked through each step of production and what might come up along the way. How do the actors respond to direction? How does the editor respond to notes? How will the showrunner handle all of it?

“That class is probably one of the coolest, greatest things I’ve ever done,” Edebiri said. “The thing that I walked away with the most was that the only wrong way to direct — well, there’s probably a lot of wrong ways, but beyond not communicating and not being open — is not finding your way. If you try to do somebody else’s way, or work somebody else’s way, it’s not going to work. Our instructors were so helpful with really illustrating their differences — and that they were successful with their differences — and so encouraging us to find our our ways of communicating, stressing the fact that you always have to be communicating.”

Directing Season 3, Episode 6, “Napkins” got Edebiri communicating more than ever. Her first meeting was with cinematographer Andrew Wehde, to talk about how their episode would fit in with the show’s existing visual palette, with Edebiri functioning as “a guest in somebody else’s house, basically.” She spent more time with production designer Merje Veski than she ever did as an actor, and worked closely with location manager Maria C. Roxas.

The episode focuses on Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), and the sudden firing which leads her to job hunt all over Chicago and end up at The Bear — a clear before and after in her life. Edebiri and Veski got as detailed as the contents of Tina’s fridge, placement of everything in it, and why it would be there in the first place.

“Tina’s fridge now at this moment in her life, versus when she’s a few years later in her career, and how she’s thinking of the kitchen and how she’s thinking of food…” Edebiri said. “Food is still a part of her life, and it’s a part of so many of ours. As a mom, when she does meal prep, that’s really different from how she’s thinking about food in our present at The Bear, but it’s still a part of her daily life.”

For the first piece of the episode, Edebiri and Wehde opted for as much static camera as possible, “trying to maintain a really controlled and tight feeling” before Tina loses her job and the handheld camera depicts how unstable she feels. Edebiri wanted Chicago to suddenly “feel like a different world… juxtaposing how small [Colón-Zayas] is with how small Tina feels.”

“When we finally, at the end of the episode, get back to The Bear, we really wanted it to feel like an early Season 1 episode, using those strong and intentional zooms, swings of the lenses, and embracing the chaos and the noise and having every shot feel really full of information,” Edebiri explained.

Matty Matheson, Ayo Edebiri, and Jon Bernthal behind the scenes of ‘The Bear’ Season 3, Episode 6.Photographer: Chuck Hodes

Then she took a big swing, asking Colón-Zayas and guest star Jon Bernthal to stay fairly still during their conversation that forms the third-act setpiece. The camera follows Tina from the restaurant counter through to the seating area, where it gently reveals her future coworkers Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Neil (Matty Matheson), and Mikey (Bernthal). After Tina starts to cry, Mikey comes over to strike up a conversation.

“In the initial scripting of it, there was a bit more movement with the two of them… with the napkins and with everything that he was doing,” Edebiri said. “As an actor— I relate to this too — you always want to have a bit of business! You always want to kind of be doing something, just for texture. I was like, ‘Please, please, trust me. The less that you do, the more that it will hit.'” She credits her actors for being “game and ready and giving and trusting” to yield the final result.

Close to a year after filming the episode (Edebiri remembers it was close to St. Patrick’s Day due to the chocolate factory location’s limited selection of seasonal snacks), Edebiri reflected on “just how much goes into everything, into every moment, and how many people are so good at their jobs.” No one is God, she noted, but there’s a specific cocktail of confidence and collaboration revealed to the person in the director’s chair.

“You have to have a certain amount of ego and a certain amount of assuredness in your decisions, but there needs to be space for collaboration, and to also be wrong, or to not have the answer, and to really be able to let someone else have the knowledge and the awareness,” she said. “It’s this really miraculous amount of collaboration with everybody, everybody having a reason for their question or for their thought, because of their vantage point and where they’re at.”

Edebiri didn’t go into “Napkins” thinking any of it was easy, but she’s more in awe than ever at the intricacy of making TV.

“It’s like making a Venn diagram, but out of a thousand circles. That’s why those moments when you get something, or you get it right, it does feel so special — because it’s like, that’s insane. That’s insane that there’s a thousand circles but found the one overlapping point.”

“The Bear” Season 3 is streaming on Hulu.