
Editor Joanna Naugle has earned another Emmy nomination for her work on one of the best shows around, The Bear. The Emmy-winner’s work once again receives recognition for Outstanding Picture Editing For A Single-Camera Comedy Series. This time it’s for the gut-turning episode, “Fishes,” in which a Christmas dinner goes… awry.
The Bear‘s creator, Christopher Storer, directed the episode and brought together the Berzatto fam for an evening of childhood cheer and family trauma. For over an hour, Naugle and all involved tell a story that lasts far longer than its runtime. Moments of suggestion, pain, and humor linger far after the episode comes to a close. It’s a remarkable hour of drama.
On the day Naugle received a nomination, she spoke with Immersive Media about crafting “Fishes.”
“Fishes” was fantastic. Congratulations on your nomination. What was it like as an editor having well over an hour to play with just that pace and that buildup and just slowly turning up the heat?
Yeah, I knew it was going to be long, but I wast sure how long exactly it was going to be. Once we got into it, I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be a full double serving. But it was just so fun to try to find a way to, as you said, turn the heat up. We kept talking about it being a pot of water that’s just bubbling and bubbling, and then at the end, it completely boils over. Every time you’re like, oh my God, this is going to be it. This is going to be the climax. And then, of course, you don’t really get the full release until the worst possible thing, which is the car driving through the wall.
We just wanted to feel more tense and more tense. We had these more moments of humor throughout, too, with the Fak brothers pitching their horrible business idea or hanging out with Sarah Paulson smoking weed in the bathroom. So, I think we wanted to have these momentary releases and those moments of comedy that broke the tension a little bit, but not fully. We really did want it to feel just like a steep incline, and then by the end you’re just like, oh my gosh. You’re just sitting at the table looking at all the chaos going on and you just can’t look away. So stressful.

I was wondering for the ebb and flow of that, like you said, you have these different moments of levity to choose from. Did you experiment, like, maybe this part of them in the bathroom smoking pot, it’ll play better five minutes later?
We definitely stuck to the script overall, but with the exception of a lot of those Fak [brothers] scenes, because they were pretty heavily improvised. They kind of put them in a room and said, “Okay, you’re pitching ideas with baseball cards. Go.” And because Matty [Matheson] and Ricky [Staffieri] are so talented and our supporting cast, our guest stars were so talented, Chris just let them go and would throw out ideas.
So, those specific scenes weren’t scripted originally, so they could kind of go whenever. That was something we definitely played around with a lot of like, okay, what are the moments where we feel like we need a little bit of release? What are the moments where we really want to be claustrophobic?
We have music over the entire episode, more or less. The only places you don’t have it is the very first scene when Tiffany and Richie are upstairs and the final dinner scene. I think we just wanted it to all feel really claustrophobic and you could peek into any room in the house and see either something really horrifying going on or something very silly. How can you make that feel like it’s all kind of going on at the same time? So rearranging the order of those more improv or unscripted scenes was a great way to just add to it all, just feeling really authentic, natural, and casual between these different people.

Do you have a lot of coverage to work with? For “Fishes,” do you have a lot of options for which character to cut to during the dinner scene?
They shoot most of it two cameras simultaneously, which is great, especially for those yelling scenes. You don’t need to worry about matching the audio as much, just ride a take and the energy and layer in from there. For that final dinner scene, they had three cameras, which is the most we’ve ever had. There weren’t a ton of takes, to be honest. We had three options to cut to, but we didn’t over-cover it by any means.
Chris is so good at getting what he wants out of the actors and making them feel comfortable. A lot of times he’s like, “They nailed it right out of the gate. They have that raw energy from the beginning.” So it really is a show that we move pretty quickly making because one, the cast is so good and so prepared, and also two, it’s supposed to be a little bit stressful. It’s supposed to be a little bit rough around the edges.
I love that Chris leans into that by being like, “I used the first take. They did some stuff I didn’t expect and I loved it, and they ran with it.” He really trusts the actors, and I think that comes through with how much actors love working with them and how they bring their best selves to the table.

The shot that I always think about from that episode is when Jon Bernthal alone and away from the family. The pain is rising. As an editor, you have so many silent moments to tell the story. Maybe if they’re one second too long or too short, it won’t get across the message. What do you look for in those moments?
When I’m cutting, especially a really tense quiet scene, it’s just all about the eye contact for me. I try to hold as much as I can of two people really looking at each other, thinking about what they’re going to say next. I hate when editing just feels like you’re only cutting for the dialogue. Every conversation has natural pauses, every conversation has moments where people need to reevaluate what they’re thinking about. I love really leaning into that and finding those moments where you feel really comfortable in the silence or really uncomfortable depending on who the people are.
There are just some amazing looks in that scene. I think it’s when Carmy gives Mikey the photo of the bear, the drawing, and just the way that Jeremy looks at John, you’re just like, “Yeah, this was the light of his life. This is the center of his universe. What a loss Mikey is.” I think we see that in little pieces, but it’s really this episode where you just see how charismatic he was, the nucleus of this family, and what a loss is felt throughout this entire series. Because he’s not in the present, he’s only in memories.

Do you ever cut moments with Mikey, just to create a greater sense of that absence?
Exactly. To that point, you don’t want to overdo it. You want to leave people just satisfied or just wanting a little bit more. So much can be said by the way these characters are looking at each other. You don’t really need to do more.
I think almost at one point in that scene we saw Mikey with the pill bottle, and that was a discussion of like, “Oh, should we see him showing this drug addiction?” His performance is so strong, it’s so much better to me if it’s understated. Josh and Chris agreed, so we don’t need to see that.
To just see him alone and see him fighting these demons, that gives people just enough to understand that, and then that moment of silence and then right off to the chaos. We’re really playing with those moments of when are we quiet intentionally and when are we just nonstop chatter, people talking, and yelling over each other. That’s the Berzatto household.

Dinner scenes are so complicated with blocking, all the players, and moving pieces. With all those characters seated at the table, what were some of the other challenges involved?
I was a little worried about that final scene. I knew what we were building up to. Also, it was relatively static. There is a fair amount of panning between the characters, but everyone’s seated. One person comes and leaves. That’s kind of it.
I wondered, what are other dinner scenes that work really well? I went and revisited episode 201 of Fleabag, which is when they’re almost entirely in the restaurant talking to each other and you’re meeting the hot priest for the first time. Why did it work so well? I think it’s the use of reaction shots. It’s so captivating, so that’s something I really tried to pay attention to with that scene.
You start to hear somebody say a line, and then unless they’re doing something really specific with their face facial expression, it’s more interesting to see how everybody is reacting to that. Mikey’s kind of teasing Uncle Lee, Richie’s laughing at first, but you see Pete is a little uncomfortable. Sugar just keeps looking over at Carmy. Carmy is just looking down at the plate and doesn’t even want to engage.
It’s so true to a chaotic family dinner.
What makes everything feel like they actually are family members is everyone is having these different reactions . If you’re gauging everybody else’s temperature at the table, it just makes it so much more tense. Just cutting back and forth between two people talking, that’s such a small fraction of what’s going on in that dinner scene. It’s all about the whole room being on edge, knowing something bad is going to happen, but when is it going to reach its peak?
I was hoping that it would just feel like the way that they shot it. Drew [Wehde], the cinematographer, was so wonderful. It does look like POV shots most of the time. So hopefully, you just feel like you’re in that extra chair and you’re picking up on all the different signals and seeing someone shifting in their seat. It just adds to that uncomfortability a little bit more. It was so fun to figure out, “How much can we ratchet up? How much can I just make you feel like you’re a fly on the wall and can do nothing to stop the train wreck that is coming?”
Check back soon for more from our interview with Joanna Naugle.