Highlights
- Jeremy Allen White’s portrayal of Carmy in The Bear is praised.
- White based his appearance as Carmy on celebrity chef Marco Pierre White.
- The Bear drew inspiration from Marco Pierre White’s career and intensity in the kitchen.
Jeremy Allen White is a TV star thanks to his manic performance in The Bear. The actor won a Golden Globe and became an unexpected sex symbol for his portrayal of Carmy Berzatto, a tortured chef who decides to refurnish the Chicago restaurant owned by his late brother, and it’s not hard to see why.
White completely inhabits the headspace of the character, and makes the audience feel as though they’re going through the rewarding yet rigorous process of putting together a top of the line meal. The actor worked in kitchens to prepare for the show, but eagle-eyed viewers may have picked up on the fact that many of his mannerisms and decisions are based on a real life chef.
Jeremy Allen White Based The Appearance Of His Bear Character On Celebrity Chef Marco Pierre White
Jeremy Allen White went through a rigorous training schedule in order to convincingly portray a chef. He told Deadline that he took a two-week course at the Pasadena Institute of Culinary Education, and tailed various chefs at Santa Monica restaurants so that he could determine the right way to move and interact with others.
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The real breakthrough for the character of Carmy, however, came when White stumbled upon a photo of Marco Pierre White. The actor was immediately drawn to White’s appearance, and the fact that he was smoking a cigarette and looking disheveled on the cover of a cookbook. He decided that Carmy would adopt a similar look, and grew out his hair to match that of the real-life British chef.
Jeremy Allen White recalled the happy accident to Deadline in 2022:
“I was reading all kinds of books before starting the show and there’s this pretty famous picture of Marco Pierre White smoking a cigarette on the cover of his book The Devil In The Kitchen. And I was like, ‘Oh wow, that guy looks cool. I wonder if I can grow my hair out and try to look something like that?’ And so I did. And then yeah, I don’t know, I think Carmy was kind of pulling his hair out the whole season. He was on the edge the whole time.”
The actor may have done too good of a job emulating Marco Pierre White. He talked about growing his hair out during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, but he admitted that his hair got a little too long during production.
“I thought [my hair] looked great on the show,” he told the host. “But people are calling out — and they’re not wrong — that I should have been wearing a cap. I should have been wearing something because so much of Carmy’s hair is probably in all those sandwiches.”
Jeremy Allen White Used Marco Pierre White As A Model Whenever His Character Had To Lose His Temper
Jeremy Allen White may have started off by emulating Marco Pierre White in appearance, but the more he looked into the chef’s life, the more he realized there were similarities with Carmy. White learned that Marco Pierre White was the first British chef to be awarded three Michelin stars, and the first man to be given the term “celebrity chef.”
He also discovered that Marco Pierre White was legendary for his intensity in the kitchen, and would regularly curse out his workers if something went wrong. The most famous example of this was in Marco Pierre White’s autobiography, in which he recalled making a young Gordon Ramsay break down in tears.
“I don’t recall what he’d done wrong but I yelled at him and he lost it,” the British chef wrote.
“Gordon crouched down in the corner of the kitchen, buried his head in his hands and started sobbing.” Fans of The Bear will note that the season 1 episode “Review” and the season 2 finale show featured Carmy freaking out in similar fashion, and berating his kitchen staff.
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The parallels are completely intentional. Jeremy Allen White told TV Insider that he used the Marco Pierre White autobiography as a template for how to create tension in the kitchen, and how to maximize his character’s explosive outbursts:
“I watched every chef movie available. I read Kitchen Confidential. I read Marco Pierre White’s book, which was also really informative about how hostile that work environment can be.”
The Bear Borrowed Aspects Of Marco Pierre White’s Career To Flesh Out Carmy Berzatto’s Fictional Career
Jeremy Allen White has made it clear that Marco Pierre White is the single most important influence on the character of Carmy Berzatto, but less talked about is the way the writers of The Bear take influence from the British chef. Over the course of the show, viewers learn that Carmy used to work at a three-Michelin-star restaurant, but he gave up the job to pursue his passion with the titular beef spot.
As pointed out by Food Republic, this career path is nearly identical to the one Marco Pierre White took in the 1990s. He was not only the first British chef, but the youngest chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars, and he maintained this impressive status for five years. Then, in 1999, he decided to return his Michelin stars and retire. His reasoning? He told The Guardian that he’d lost his passion for cooking in the pursuit of validation:
“I was being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, so what was it truly worth? I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect, and I belittled myself… So [I gave] my stars back, spent time with my children and re-invent[ed] myself.”
The Bear isn’t the first piece of media to borrow from Marco Pierre White’s impressive story. Bradley Cooper modeled his performance after White in the culinary drama Burnt (2015), and director Ridley Scott announced that he would be making a film about the British chef back in 2018. The Belfast Telegraph reported that Russell Crowe and Michael Fassbender were set to play White at different periods in his life, but there have been no major updates on the film.
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Despite his similarities to Marco Pierre White in appearance and history, Jeremy Allen White assured Deadline that the character of Carmy is headed for some unexpected changes in the upcoming season of The Bear.
“He is sort of trying to conduct this creative revolution within this group of people,” the actor opined. “But he knows that he doesn’t have the space or even the joy to inspire them himself all the time… Carmy has been doing things his way for too long.”
Source: NewsFinale
