"You want a big mountain to climb": "The Bear" star on why Cousin Richie is so satisfying to play

As the combustible Richie on FX's "The Bear," Ebon Moss-Bachrach is a constantly moving force of nervous energy. In real life, the actor is calm, assured and thoughtful. And for a guy whose defining roles, on shows like "Girls" and "Andor," have often been lumped together, Moss-Bachrach has showed remarkable versatility, going from investigate reporter in "The Dropout" to jilted boyfriend in "No Hard Feelings." 

"You want to play somebody complicated," Moss-Bachrach told me on "Salon Talks," "somebody who's striving in some way, who has some work to do, or someone in some kind of crisis . . . You want a big mountain to climb. " In the second season of "The Bear," Moss-Bachrach has kept climbing, showing sides of the man at the heart of Chicago's favorite "Original Berf" audiences couldn't have seen coming in those early episodes.

Watch Ebon Moss-Bachrach's "Salon Talks" episode here to hear him open up about how he almost missed his chance at being on "The Bear," where he was when the show blew up, and how the "geometry" of his face seems to give people a different impression of him.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Your character, Richie, has gone through a lot of change and transformation. Tell me where we find him when we meet him now in Season 2.

Season 2 begins just a few days after Season 1 ends, so he's really in a similar place. He lobbied, unsuccessfully, to keep things as they were, to preserve the legacy and preserve the neighborhood beef joint.

"Berf" joint.

Berf joint, exactly. He's determined to remain part of the new iteration, The Bear, but I think he doesn't really know exactly where he fits in and is desperately trying to navigate this change and earn his place.

This season, we see a little more of all these characters' worlds. There's this recurring theme about beginning again. What does that mean for Richie? 

We get to a place at the beginning of the first season where, faced with the choice of not being able to go there and be a part of it anymore or change, he's choosing change. But then, what is change? How does he change? What is he supposed to change into? How does he go about that? He doesn't even know which direction he's really supposed to walk in, so he starts, in his own unusual way, trying to educate himself.

He has so many blind spots, and he doesn't even really know how he's supposed to grow. It's a lot of introspection, and a lot of stumbling and fumbling around in the dark, literally. When we find him, he's down in the basement going through old photos and old memories, and taking inventory.

This season is definitely about how to learn new things when you're not a kid anymore. What does that look like for you when you're approaching new roles and looking at new opportunities, especially having had this big breakthrough in your career in your mid-40s?

One of the reasons I'm attracted to my job is because of the variety of experiences. I get bored fairly easily, and it's nice that every job is quite different from the one I've had before. That was a main attraction to me to acting, and to working in this way.  

I also think in general, in my life, I love new experiences. I love traveling. I like to be out of my element. I like the feeling of testing my abilities of communication with people. If I'm somewhere where I don't speak the language, it just makes me feel alive and forces me to use my brain in different ways. Perhaps this variety of jobs that I've had, and the nature of the life that I wound up living, I'm pretty good at learning new things. Like you say, there are new sets of skills.

I didn't really have to learn too much for Richie. I didn't have to learn how to cook because he doesn't really cook. I had to spend some time in Chicago. So much of him, to me, is someone who adores their city, and feels so much of his identity and his makeup is being a Chicagoan and a White Sox fan. I didn't really know what that meant, so I had to do research for that. 

But, how do we stay facile and nimble? I think it's important. I know it's good for the brain. Routine, as susceptible as we all are to it, and as comforting as it can be, or just a requisite nature of the job and grinds, routine is definitely something to push up against, I think.

You were actually away for two months last year in Greece when the first season blew up. It came out of nowhere. When you started on "Girls," it was already in the third season. But, this show was different. What was it like for you being away? Were you totally off the grid? 

I wasn't totally off the grid, but we didn't really have good internet. There's a group text of a bunch of us from the show, and I was checking in how everyone was doing. We're a close group. But I didn't really have great internet at our little house, so I would have to go down to the cafe, or bar, or coffee shop place. So I would go down once a day, and I would just get these floods of texts. They started generally excited and, "We did it." Then they started to get serious like, "Oh Ebon, this is actually getting weird and crazy." 

About two weeks in, after the release, I got a call from an agent who was just like, "This is a real big deal." It's incredible. I'm very proud of the show. I love making it, and I've made my peace with that there. I'm OK as long as the experience is nice. It's such a hard industry, but then for it to be received like that is nothing I ever expect, but it's certainly sweet.

This almost fell through the cracks for you, this opportunity.

In a way. I just was moving my family over to the London for a job, and I had so many practical things going on in my life. For some reason, it slipped through the cracks. Then my agent, Brian Nossokoff, thank god, he reminded me to read this one. He flagged it as something that I'd be loath to miss.

When you read it did you think, "This is special?"

I knew it was special. The writing was really, really strong and very vivid. The characters were written very compelling. And just the voice, it was just a really honed, crystallized thing. I could tell that there was a lot of real life put into it. It's rare to read a script that has so much energy, just in its draft form.

It's an energetic show. What is it like for you as a performer?

We don't live in a very similar energy space. So it's nice, I get to put on a different suit of clothes, play with a different way of being in the world. I'm fine with the way I am. I don't feel like I need to emulate him [Richie] too much. But it is nice to get a little bit loud and expressive and volatile, not to censor yourself, to live fully and without being self-conscious in any way. It's fun. He's a fun character to play.

What's it like coming back to this set now when it is a big deal? The expectations are different. What did it feel like to return to this, and how do you return to it knowing you're going to be looking at the scrutiny this time around?

Sure, that is a quantity, and there is a little bit of white noise there, but the work of making a TV show is so hard to begin with and requires all your energy. Very quickly, that white noise fades. We're just trying to get through our day, and make our day. For me, I'm just trying to block out cameras, and block out lights, and block out the fact that it's snowing outside, and just be here with my scene partner, and just have all of that other stuff fade away. I'm pretty good at turning down the noise. 

It's not like we showed up and, all of a sudden, everybody's trailer was twice the size. We had the same crew shooting on the same stage. It was the same. We really just picked up where we left off. I was grateful for that because I really deeply enjoy making the show, and working with the people that I'm lucky enough to work with.

When I Google you, there's a phrase about your characters that comes up a lot...

I don't know. There's a few words.

"Dirtbag."

Well, that's one of them. There was just this thing in the paper yesterday. I guess there's some of that stuff. I'm not against that. I'm not the cleanest person myself. I don't mind a little dirty, dirt, dirtiness. I don't like putting anybody in too small of a box. I just find that that's a boring and lazy way to watch stuff.

When I read about things that have been written about your character on "Girls," or even on "Andor," or on this show, those words get used. Yet, it seems to me, these are these really complicated and charismatic guys. What is it about those guys that appeals to you? 

Well, you want to play somebody complicated, or somebody who's striving in some way, who has some work to do, or someone in some kind of crisis. Being at some peace with yourself, that's what you hope to get for your character at some point, but that doesn't make for very interesting drama or storytelling. There's not much to do. You want a big mountain to climb. 

With the dirtbag stuff, I don't know. Perhaps my face, the geometry of my face is constructed in a certain way that I look like a dirtbag. Perhaps. I can't think about it too much. It's not useful for me to wallow, or spend too much time thinking about that stuff. Desi was a deliciously frustrating character. Because of the nature of that show, it was so talked about, and polarizing, and frustrating to people, that I think that colored the perception of him. 

Yet, I would never think of you as an actor who is typecast or pigeonholed. I was watching "The Bear" while I was watching "The Dropout," and I honestly didn't connect that you were on both of those shows. Then I saw the trailer for "No Hard Feelings" and didn't connect it. I have to ask about "No Hard Feelings," because I'm so excited about it. Who's that guy?

He's an entrance into the story. We see, through his pain, how it reveals a lot about the character that Jennifer Lawrence plays. He's a deeply hurt and sore ex of hers, who feels like she's not been very nice to him. So through their few scenes at the beginning you see, "OK, this is the story that we're in for. This is the trajectory of Jennifer's character." 

Like I said before, the variety, I'm happy to just put my head down and disappear into a part that seems really fun and interesting to me. I get bored easy. I like to keep it different. That's what I think acting is about.

You came to acting a little later. You didn't start out with this dream, necessarily, your whole life?

No, no, no, no. Nothing like that. But, I did start pretty early. In college. I guess I was like 18, and then working by the time I was 20, 21, something like that.

And, something clicked?

I'm not good at much, so I think, in some ways, it quickly weirdly became the most viable career path for me. I was very lucky early on, and worked with some really wonderful supportive people. Because I was going to school in New York, I could take meetings with agents, so I could do the business end of it too. Were I to be at some school, if was at Oberlin, or something in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't really have been able to do something like that. So I just was very fortunate to be in right place, right time, in a certain place in my life, and then passionate and into it enough to not completely f**k it up.

Right. You've not f**ked it up for 25 years now in your career. And yet, you're at a moment now at the top of your game. A lot of other actors would be concerned about being at that age, and this is unprecedented for you in your career. This is the most success, maybe, you've had.

I think probably that's true. When I say things like that though, it makes me feel a little bit like I'm discrediting all these other years where I've been doing work that's been so meaningful to me. But yes, I guess from a public standpoint, I'm probably at the zenith of my — I don't know what the word would be — forward-facing, or something. There's a lot of light shining on this show and, because of that, me. So, I welcome it. I'm not against it. As long as I get to keep disappearing into my parts, I don't think it'll be a problem.