Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Lionel Boyce star as Sydney Adamu, Bettina “Tina” Marrero, and Marcus Brooks in The Bear. All episodes of the new season are currently streaming, exclusively on Hulu.  This interview will contain spoilers.

Season three of FX’s The Bear follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and Richard “Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they do what it takes to elevate The Bear, their beef stand turned fine dining establishment, to the highest level, all while doing their best just to stay in business. It’s a losing battle every single day in the restaurant business. Carmy pushes himself harder than ever, and demands excellence from his crew, who do their best to match his intensity.

“As far as directing, it was really a blast, I think kind of a dream because I get to be working on a show that I love but because it’s a bit of a bottle episode that also leaves room for a little more — like, you can step outside of the box a little bit in places and make some directorial choices that might not necessarily be in the same exact tone or the same exact choices of the show, but it’s still in the world,” Edebiri shared, reflecting on her experience directing an episode of the series for the first time. “Liza also is just kind of one of the greatest working actresses ever, so I think to also get to showcase or at least give her a place to showcase that was very, very, very, very, very cool for me personally.”

“Well, I mean, as a viewer, I just, you know, Marcus is beloved and so, to get a little more of what keeps him up at night and how he powers through is beautiful,” Colón-Zayas expressed, sharing her love for the episodes that focus on one character. “With Tina, just to be able to see how we’re sometimes facing — powering through, trying to elevate and help each other do that is just something that we haven’t experienced before.”

Boyce continued to explain why these stories are important, adding, “I think with storytelling, people can focus so much on the main character, they can make these other characters just in service only of the story and make them feel 2D, and this show does a good job of making these people feel 3D and you can necessarily see yourself to be someone other than the main couple of people. I think everyone feels that way about everybody and I think it also just helps with us exploring every avenue of what it is to be in the food industry. Everyone has all these individual ups and downs and things that they’re going through, so they’re connecting with someone else here rather than here.”

We discussed what they consider to be the most significant moment for each of their characters in this season, the importance of having individual character-centric episodes, and more.

Watch my interview below: