The Bear is one of the most intense shows of all time. The whole point of the show is to convey how stressful and maddening it can be to work in a kitchen, and the 13 Emmy nominations that the first season earned is a testament to how successful it is. The incredibly high bar that the main cast set was not lost on Matty Matheson. “Acting scares the s*** out of me,” he told Variety.
Matheson wears many hats. He’s best known for playing Neil Fak, the childhood friend of the show’s protagonist, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), but there’s a lot more to Mathewson that meets the eye. He’s a producer on The Bear, and he’s a real life chef with an impressive resume under his belt. In fact, he’s the only real-life chef on the show.
Matheson currently operates the restaurants Cà Phê Rang, Prime Seafood Palace, Rizzo’s House of Parm, and Fonda Balam under the umbrella of his hospitality company Our House. He’s also appeared on several popular food shows, including Munchies on Vice and Cookin’ Somethin’ W/ Matty Matheson on YouTube. Matheson is a genuine phenomenon in the culinary world, and with one success after another, you’d think a gig pretending to be stressed out in a kitchen would be a cake walk.
It wasn’t. As Matheson’s previous quote alluded to, the chef struggled to remember his lines and maintain a screen presence that he felt was authentic to the kitchen lifestyle. “Acting is really difficult,” he told the outlet. “It’s, like, a lot of hard work. I spent hours trying to remember, like, four lines. As comfortable as I am with everybody, and how helpful everybody is, you want to show up prepared and ready to rock with everybody else — and everyone else is so good. It’s very nerve-wracking for me, personally.”
As anyone who’s watched The Bear can attest, Matheson is a natural. He melds into the ensemble cast perfectly, and his spacey, oftentimes unorthodox line delivery can lead to some unexpected laughs. The showrunners were so impressed with the chef-turned-actor, in fact, that they based an entire episode around Matheson in season 2. He once again rose to the challenge.
Matheson also weighs in on the various dishes that get prepared throughout the show. He serves as a sort of backstop, approving what’s authentic and vetoing whatever isn’t. He also developed the dishes that appear on the restaurant’s menu, whether it be the welcome broth or the savory cannoli. It’s important to have a basis in culinary reality, Matheson noted, but at the end of the day, he’s cognizant of the fact that people like The Bear for its emotional themes.
“It’s lifting the veil a little bit on how intense or dysfunctional restaurants are,” the chef explained. “But way more on unmanageability and people not being able to deal with their emotions or articulate their needs.” If you can’t get enough of Matheson’s culinary talents, you can check out his YouTube channel here. He regularly uploads videos of him trying and reacting to different foods throughout the country.
Be warned: it will make you very hungry.