‘The Bear’ editor Joanna Naugle: ‘I loved being able to push the limits of how stressed we could be’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
If Season 1 of “The Bear” was the Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) show, Season 2 was about those who support him and the restaurant. “The thing I like about Season 2 is that we got to highlight some of the other characters that I think audience members have really fallen in love with but we just didn’t have time in Season 1,” editor Joanna Naugle tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: TV Editors panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). “We really get to know Marcus [Lionel Boyce] more, we get to know Sugar [Abby Elliott] more, there are some new characters as well. And so we really were just trying to show the team coming together. Everyone went on their own journeys and kind of became better at their craft and came together to create this new restaurant, work on something. At the end of the day, it’s a show about teamwork and people coming together, and I love that we have such a great ensemble of characters and actors to draw on because everyone is so lovable and you’re rooting for them along the way.”
Just like a kitchen, the pace and tempo of “The Bear” can change on a dime. While the Emmy-winning series loves to traffic in intense chaos and freneticism, that style is not suitable for someone like Marcus, the mild-mannered pastry chef who gets a showcase installment in the fourth episode of the season, “Honeydew.” Directed by Ramy Youssef, with whom Naugle and creator Christopher Storer worked on “Ramy,” “Honeydew” finds Marcus training under acclaimed pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter) in Copenhagen. Naugle, who won an Emmy for cutting the pilot of “The Bear,” co-edited “Honeydew” with Adam Epstein.
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“At first we were cutting things really fast and we had all this loud music and we’re trying to make it feel like ‘The Bear,'” she recalls. “And once we started talking to Chris Storer, he was like, ‘No, Marcus’ episode — this should be meditative, this should be slow.’ Even in the crazy chaos at the restaurant, Marcus is always an island of calm. He really centers everyone. So we really had to fight our instincts of being like, ‘OK, we want to feel like this is within the universe of the show but also feel like we have more time to breathe, focus a little bit more on the processes, on Marcus taking his time, learning how to become a better pastry chef from Luca.’ So it was really fun to find that balance.”
That was not the case with “Fishes,” the sixth episode and the longest one to date in the show’s history at 66 minutes. A flashback to a Berzatto family Christmas, “Fishes” mined a dysfunctional family gathering for all its worth. “We had talked about this episode being the most stressful one of the series yet and how it should just feel like a pot of water that’s bubbling over,” Naugle says. To build the awkwardness and anxiety-inducing moments throughout the episode, Naugle made sure to have music under every scene so every frame feels claustrophobic and distracting. The episode, for which Naugle has won an ACE Eddie Award, culminates at the dinner table, during which various arguments escalate to Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) driving her car through the house. Naugle was “really struggle” with maintaining the energy at the dinner scene initially since everyone’s seated, but she soon found her solution in reaction shots.
“We usually have three cameras roaming at once, so I really was just poring through the footage for all those little reaction shots. You hear someone say a line, but immediately you’re seeing how someone reacts to it, and Sugar’s looking at Cicero [Oliver Platt], Cicero’s looking at Carmy, Carmy’s looking down on his plate,” she says. “There’s so much information that could be shared just seeing how everybody is reacting to this horribly tense situation. It was so fun. I loved being able to push the limits of how stressed we could be.”
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