Mikey (Jon Bernthal) with the fork; Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) from The Bear. Photo:Courtesy of FX
“There's degrees of messiness,” The Bear’s prop master Laura Roeper tells me over the phone from Chicago. “Chris [Storer, the series creator] is like, ‘no, [it has to be] chaotic craziness’... So we’re in the kitchen, and we got to throw spaghetti sauce over everything, because the mess wasn’t big enough for Chris. He goes, ‘no, way more’,” Roeper laughs. “We threw spaghetti sauce all over. It's on the ceiling, it's everywhere.” Advertisem*nt
Well, it turns out that despite the Seven Fishes dinner menu, the only thing getting served up is a family-sized helping of trauma. Fishes concludes with Jon Bernthal’s Mikey throwing forks at Uncle Lee and Donna driving her car through the wall. It’s a frenetic and deeply affecting hour of television, which leaves you winded. Almost as soon as it dropped this summer, it was hailed as not just one of the best Christmas TV episodes ever, but one of the best TV episodes full stop. So how did the crew pull it all off?“The Fishes episode was shot at two different places,” Roeper tells me. “It was shot at a house, a location home, and then we also rebuilt the dining room on our stages so we could crash the car through it.”Before the shoot, Roeper went on the location scouts for the perfect house – one that could be loaded with A-listers and abrasive timers for a few days, and have sauce chucked at the ceilings. Eventually, the team found the ideal setting in Evanston, 12 miles north of downtown Chicago.
Food
The Christmas Dinner in ‘Peep Show’ is Horrible—and That’s What Makes it Great
Ruby Lott-Lavigna
Then the real logistical challenges began. “We had a lot of actors that day, obviously,” Roeper says. “And I have to make sure everybody has something to drink, everybody has something to nosh on.” The prop department had to set up certain things that could be eaten on camera, for instance. “So, knowing I had all these people when we were on the location shoot, I looked at my producer and I was in a panic. I'm like, ‘I need way more room’.” Space wasn’t the only dilemma: “This is Seven Fishes Dinner,” Roeper adds. “Fish stink. Nobody wants to be with 15 actors and stinky fish.” Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
Life
What Shocked Non-Brits the Most About British Christmas Dinners
Niloufar Haidari
“I get the fork that we're going to use, and we bring that to a prop maker,” Roeper explains. “A custom mould maker. He made me five hard rubber forks that you can throw at people.” Roeper works with the people on stunt and special effects to test her props. “So, obviously with the fork, what do you think we did?” she laughs. “We threw it at each other.” They weren’t playing around either: “We'll throw it hard,” she says. “Jon is a really strong person, so he broke three of them during action.”The best story Roeper tells me about the fork scene though, concerns a sheer fluke. “When [Bernthal] threw it one time, it landed in the cannoli,” she says. “And we captured that as part of it, where the fork actually landed.” Talk about a happy accident.“The chaos is part of it,” Roeper says, when she thinks about the way Fishes has resonated with people. “I think the reason so many people related to it is because everybody has a certain amount of chaos in their family,” Roeper says. “Unfortunately, I think alcoholism and drug addiction are so rampant that when you talk to people, everyone says, ‘oh, my uncle was an alcoholic’, or ‘my cousin did this at a family party’. So I think that part of the episode was also really human for people.”This really gets to the heart of the whole show. “You know, The Bear itself isn't a show about a restaurant,” Roeper says finally. “It’s a show about the people that work at a restaurant.” And, as at any restaurant, the fare seems that much more spectacular when you get to know the people lobbing forks at each other.