‘The Bear' star Abby Elliott used her own birth experience to inform the standout Season 3 episode ‘Ice Chips'
Abby Elliott had known Natalie 'Sugar' Berzatto would give birth during the third season of The Bear for a while. So when it came time for Elliott to give birth to her son in June 2023, she was prepared to go the extra mile.
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'I knew that the contractions would be a part of the episode, so when I had my actual labor with my second child, with my son, I had my mom in the delivery room with me, and she recorded my contractions,' Elliott says during the latest episode of Awards Magnet. 'So I could go back and watch them for acting purposes.'
For Elliott, the immersive approach to preparation was critical. She wanted to make sure Natalie's contractions felt as real as possible, sharp and painful shocks that arrived quickly and broke up the tension of Natalie's conversations with her estranged mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis).
'You're in excruciating pain, and then you're kind of like, 'OK, now, what do we do?'' she says. 'But then, having Donna there made for such drama.'
'Ice Chips,' Elliott's standout episode from The Bear Season 3, was written by co-showrunner Joanna Calo and directed by creator and co-showrunner Christopher Storer. The episode is essentially a two-hander between Elliott and Curtis, an Emmy Award winner for her performance in Season 2 of The Bear, where their characters try to find common ground after years of strife and difficulty.
'Jamie's just unbelievable. She's just so warm and nurturing. But also, I'm terrified of her, because she's so intimidating and incredible,' Elliott says of her screen partner. 'When you work with her, she feels like such a good friend, and then she snaps into Donna once that wig is on. She gets into it — like she is Donna. So all the hugging and the nurturing stuff that she has done as Jamie kind of goes out the window a little because she wants you to really feel the moment.'
Elliott says she and Curtis ran through the episode's main sequence — basically a 20-minute scene — just once. 'If there was a lull or something didn't go as planned, we just kind of rolled with it,' she says of the show's improvisational nature. 'If one of us forgot a beat, I could always go to a contraction. It all just felt authentic. They need each other in this moment.'
'Ice Chips' ends without a significant resolution for Natalie and Donna; the baby is born (and the birth is not shown on screen) while Donna sits in the hospital waiting room. 'In this moment, there was a connection,' Elliott says of where the characters ended up and what lies ahead for their relationship. 'But Donna, with these traits — whether you want to call them borderline alcoholic, bipolar — that doesn't go away. You know she's trying, she's there, but it's still not perfect after this. And that's what I think Chris does so brilliantly with the show. It isn't wrapped up in a bow. Life isn't like that. It continues. And you can have this beautiful moment and some deep connection, and then return to being the people you are.'
The Bear returns for its fourth season on June 25, where Natalie's child will presumably impact not just her life, but her relationship with Carmy (Emmy Award winner Jeremy Allen White). Through the first three seasons, Natalie has often bounced between being a sister for Carmy and being his surrogate mother as the older sibling. Elliott says the dynamic is invariably forced to change due to Natalie's new responsibilities as a parent.
'Natalie has wanted to step into that role of oldest sibling after Michael's death,' she says. 'With Carm, it's like this constant push and pull between deeply wanting to help him, and just dreading that she's going to be disappointed by him constantly. And I think that just with every season — and with him continuing to be in his patterns and in his head like that — it just escalates more and more for her. So now that Natalie has a child to take care of, there is a little bit of throwing your hands up in the air at Carm. Just like, 'OK, I can't help you!' And then, you know, immediately saying, 'Oh no, but I do need you so badly. You're the only one left.' So I think it's just the constant struggle.'
The Bear streams on Hulu.
Email your questions to slugfests@goldderby.com.
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