During the writing of season two of The Bear, Abby Elliott found out she was pregnant with her second child. By then, FX’s kitchen dramedy was already a hit, nabbing a record-breaking 10 Emmys for its first series (a record it would later go on to break). Elliott, who plays Nat, chef Carmy’s even-keeled older sister, was anxious about mentioning her pregnancy. At that point, it wasn’t clear how involved she would be in the series as it developed. Maybe, Elliott worried, this would give them reason to write her out entirely: “I have been on shows before where pregnant actresses get written out, so I was nervous about it.”
Happily, that wasn’t the case. “They were so thrilled for me,” she says of the show’s creator Christopher Storer and writer Joanna Calo – so thrilled, in fact, that they started writing her pregnancy into Nat’s season three storyline. Elliott, 38, calls this development a “gift”, but her pregnancy turned out to be a gift for the writers, too. Nat being pregnant, and now a mum in the newly released fourth season, has proved a fruitful avenue for the character – and a brilliant showcase for the actor who plays her. Take “Ice Chips”, a standout episode in series three, in which Nat finds herself in labour with the most unlikely of birth partners: her haywire mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Together, the actors are quietly formidable, all bruised vulnerability and exposed nerves.
But then, we’ve come to expect excellent performances from The Bear. Set in a Chicago sandwich shop, the series bottles the addictive white-knuckle chaos of a professional kitchen. Jeremy Allen White is Carmy, a chef who leaves behind his promising career in fine dining to run his late brother’s failing business, and, in the last season, tries to open a Michelin-level restaurant of his own. As Nat, Elliott is the show’s calm centre, determined to hold together a family that’s hell-bent on falling apart.
For Elliott, the show was a reintroduction and a return to her comedy roots. Her dad is Chris Elliott, a familiar face from Late Night with David Letterman, Groundhog Day and, more recently, Schitt’s Creek. His dad was Bob Elliott of the legendary deadpan duo Bob and Ray. Abby Elliott’s childhood in Wilton, Connecticut, was predictably “bananas”, she grins. “My sister and I were always doing art classes, putting on plays and filming ourselves.” In a dusty box somewhere is a VHS tape of Elliott aged eight performing a parody of Calvin Klein’s absurdly sensual perfume ads: “CK One, so powerful you could die...” she whispers now, before letting her limbs go loose and pretending to drop dead.
There is plenty of Nat in Elliott, who is bubbly and thoughtful. Blonde, with freckles that look as though they’ve been dusted on her cheeks like icing sugar, she has the affable air of someone who spends a lot of time in nature. Which makes sense: almost a decade ago now, she swapped the concrete of New York for the state parks and beaches of Los Angeles.
At the age of 21, she joined Saturday Night Live, becoming its youngest ever female cast member (she remains so to this day). Yet her route there was circuitous. She dropped out of college in Maryland after one semester, and enrolled in improv classes at the encouragement of her dad. “I took myself very seriously with drama,” she laughs, recalling a monologue she performed at a high school talent show that got more laughs than she intended. “My dad was like, ‘You’re funny, you know? Why don’t you try improv?’”
When she started on SNL, Elliott was still “figuring things out”. She remembered that her dad had loved her impressions when she was growing up, and saw an opening impersonating A-list stars. In her repertoire were a pouty Angelina Jolie, a raspy Drew Barrymore, and an earthily elegant Meryl Streep. Elliott doesn’t find impressions very funny any more, though: “I guess because it feels like I was beating a dead horse for so long.” Would she come out of retirement to imitate her Bear co-stars? “I don’t know how I’d do a Jeremy Allen White impression,” she says, inadvertently doing a pretty good one as she furrows her brows in tormented concentration. “It’s all too subtle and nuanced.”
Everyone knows that working on SNL is a baptism of fire. Its happy-go-lucky vibe belies a prodigious output and a cut-throat mentality. Like The Hunger Games for kids who did musical theatre. “Every week was a new week, and your happiness would depend on whether you got something on air or not, and if three weeks went by without a sketch, you’d think, ‘Uh-oh, am I going to be fired?’” Elliott recalls. “There was always that looming threat of getting fired. That was the worst that could happen. And then, I kind of did.” Get fired, she means.
Elliott had initially asked the show’s creator and producer Lorne Michaels if she could leave, but then she got cold feet. “I went back to him with my tail between my legs asking to stay, but after that season, Lorne said, ‘No, I’m going to cut you loose.’”
The timing was right. “As much as I enjoyed being on that show, sketch comedy wasn’t going to be it for me. It’s not why I started and it’s not how I wanted to end. Also, I had learnt the lessons I was going to learn... and so I left and, you know, the water was warm.” Soon after, she landed roles in How I Met Your Mother, the Bravo comedy Odd Mom Out, and the Dan Levy series Indebted. Sitcoms seemed to be her future.
But then Elliott received an audition notice for The Bear. “It was so unique,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool. This is so different.’” And Natalie was multi-dimensional, she says. “I’ve played characters before where you’re just the person who sets up the joke, and then the guy comes in and has the punchline.” Her experience in comedy and on SNL proved invaluable on a set where the cast and crew work fast and hard, and a show in which the character’s choked confessions and epic tantrums are laced with improvisation.
She had to fight her impulse to play Natalie like a comedian; to give her a funny voice, or punctuate every line with a gag. “My first day on set, it was very clear to me that I had to play her as natural and as real as possible,” she says. For what it’s worth, she considers The Bear a comedy – a categorisation that caused a kerfuffle at the Emmys last year, where it was judged in the comedy category alongside more classically funny shows such as What We Do in the Shadows and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
That online chatter didn’t register with the cast, insists Elliot. “It really wasn’t a conversation with us at all. A lot of people think the show is a drama because of these heavy situations, but there are also funny moments in each episode that break up that stress and anxiety. But no, it wasn’t anything we thought about.” The show isn’t “funny haha”, but it has its moments. Awarding bodies like the Emmys don’t historically allow much leeway for genre fluidity, I suggest. “The rigidity! It’s 2025 babe, get with the times.”
Doors have opened for Elliott since The Bear – but as of now, none that she is ready to walk through. “To be able to make those decisions is new and exciting,” she says. “But I still read for things. I like going on tape and auditioning. It’s definitely inspired me to write more for myself and figure out the next thing.”
She’s in no rush, though. Elliott lives with her husband, the screenwriter Bill Kennedy, and their two young kids, and she enjoys the balance of her two lives as actor and mum. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t relish the occasions on which those worlds intersect, like when she found herself pumping breast milk alongside fellow new mum Sarah Snook at the Golden Globes last year. “She’s my pumping buddy! And now our kids are friends and play together,” she says. “I’ll never forget that moment.”
Maybe soon, her worlds will collide again. “I’d love my dad to be a guest star on The Bear,” Elliott says. He wouldn’t be the first familiar face to cameo on the series; Olivia Colman, Brie Larson, Bob Odenkirk have all made an appearance. “I know he is definitely on board, and I want to make it happen, so let’s put it out there into the universe.”
For once, Elliott isn’t putting stock solely in the headwinds and tailspins of her career. “I don’t put all my emotional eggs in that basket any more,” she declares proudly. What’s ironic is that were she to do so, she would find immense satisfaction: a heaving cornucopia right in her lap for the first time ever. But as it happens, in the lead-up to The Bear’s much-hyped fourth season, she is preparing for something infinitely more important: “My daughter is graduating preschool, so we’re really gearing up for that!”
All episodes of ‘The Bear’ season four are now streaming on Disney+ in the UK and on Hulu in the US
The Bear season 4 is delicious at points, but tries far too hard at others: review
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