The Bear star Ayo Edebiri made a mighty impressive directorial debut on the series with “Napkins.” The episode written by Catherine Schetina follows Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) in the past when she loses work and struggles to find her place in the world again. It all leads her to The Beef, where she first meets Mikey (Jon Bernthal).
The first meeting between the two is beautiful. A natural connection. It’s executed to perfection by all involved, including Emmy-nominated editor Joanna Naugle. Recently, Nauagle spoke with Immersive’s editor-in-chief, Jack Giroux, and broke down the Ayo Edebiri-directed episode:
It was so fun working on that with Ayo on her directorial debut. She’s just such a natural, and you could just tell she and Liza have such a connection. She brought out this wonderful, vulnerable performance from Liza. I think the show really shines when it has these flashback episodes where we’ve already fallen in love with these supporting characters and then just get to know them even more.
We talked about a lot with this episode that it was all about routine and how Tina is just somebody who likes to know where she’s going. She likes to show up, she’ll always do a great job, but she needs that structure. So, we really started out with that first montage, cutting on the beats. We keep cutting back to the clock; everything feels like it’s in line.
Then when she loses her job, that’s when we tried to make things feel a little bit messier. We’re cutting between different locations, things aren’t really coming at the same pacing. We’re messing with that a bit. And so, it should feel like she’s losing control of her very orchestrated life. So, that was something we really wanted to lean into early on.
When she comes to The Beef, we really wanted to feel like, okay, this is a flashback to season one and immediately choosing music to represent that, cutting with the style that we did. I was rewatching early season one episodes, and I was like, wow, we really did a lot of crosstalk and cutting in the middle of actions to make them feel incomplete. I really tried to mimic that. We even reused some of the footage we shot back in 2021, which was really fun.
Once she sits down with Mikey, it’s just supposed to feel like losing track of time, where it’s just like, oh, this is somebody who, when you’re with them, he’s fully present. We really wanted to use a lot of the wides at the beginning. They’re kind of settling in. It’s a little awkward. And then, we start using closer and closer coverage as people are getting a little bit more honest with each other, a little bit more vulnerable. You’re seeing that connection form with Mikey and Tina. It’s an embarrassment of riches with the performances. They’re both so good. This scene could be another 40 minutes, and I’d still be bound.
The Bear season three is now available to stream on Hulu.
