The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri shares her approach to acting

Speaking with Backstage Magazine in the latest issue, the American-Nigerian actress described her approach as intertwined; the cerebral, the looser, and what she calls the zone.

On cerebral, she explains, “You’re thinking about the process; you’re thinking about all the things you’ve learned. It’s very by-the-book. It’s correct.”

For Edebiri, the looser approach is “just free-flowing. It’s almost improvisation. It’s [similar to] that feeling where you’re like, Whoa, I finished writing this thing and I don’t know how I wrote it. I don’t know what I did to get here, but there are some good things in it. It’s messy, but it’s good.”

The zone is “the perfect mix of both those things, where you have enough awareness that what you’re doing is based in skill and routine,” she says. “You have that solid and steady foundation, but you still have enough free-flowing energy to be able to have lightness and create.”

Edebiri goes on to state that this last approach is what she uses on The Bear, which she says, is the ideal place to get into it.

In her words, “There’s space for that type of play, for that type of freedom, because the…the camerawork is a little bit frenetic. Our camera crew is so amazing at working with us, leading us, and following us back and forth.”

During the interview, she reveals that she got her approach while taking a few acting classes at New York University (NYU). It was there that she started leaning toward the Feldenkrais Method, a technique developed by engineer Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.

“A lot of that method of acting is focused on the body and the body’s response,” Edebiri explains. “As a comedian and a very physical person, I’ve got very long limbs, and I’m always stretching them. I just feel like I’m a very kinetically aware person.”

Her intertwined take on acting is paying off based on the recognition she continues to receive with her performance on the award-winning series.

Edebiri’s portrayal as sous chef “Sydney Adamu” has earned her a Critics Rising Star Award and, most recently, an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series 2023.

Set in a Chicago sandwich shop-turned-fine-dining restaurant in season two, the show secured 13 Emmy nominations for its first season—including one for the actress in the supporting actress in a comedy category.

In addition to The Bear, Edebiri is headed to the MCU as a cast member of the upcoming project titled Thunderbolts, which will feature Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen, and David Harbour.