How Jeremy Allen White got his cooking experience preparing for the bear

So what are Jeremy Allen White's culinary skills today? "Still, not great," he told Uproxx. Luckily, all he has to do is look like he knows what he's doing for "The Bear," not execute it. As he explained, "I can pretend well. I can move well...I hope we can do more of a show and I just want to get better and better."

The most important part wasn't the cooking skills, of course, but capturing the stressful atmosphere of the show. White talked about how "Uncut Gems," the 2019 crime thriller starring Adam Sandler as a man with a life-ruining gambling problem, was a big inspiration. "I think it's a movie that [writer/executive producer/director] Chris Storer and I talked about in preparation," he explained. "We wanted to feel that anxiety throughout. The energy [is] really, really high."

It might sound crazy for the writers and actors of a TV series about a group of cooks to take inspiration from 'Uncut Gems', but it makes sense even beyond the inherently stressful nature of it. food industry. Carmy may be a cook, but he's also a gamer. Throughout the first season, he devotes much of his time and money to what looks like a dying restaurant, even after realizing the extent of his brother's debt. As far as we know for most of the season, it's an objectively terrible decision that he just keeps pushing hard on. This adds yet another level of tension to the series, as the stakes for Carmy are much higher than just having a bad day at work.