Why“ The Bear” star Liza Colón-Zayas 'freaked out' about filming Tina's pivotal season 2 moment

"They just threw me in the deep end," the actor says of making episode 5, "Pop."

Give The Bear star Liza Colón-Zayas a sharp knife, and she's totally fine. But when she was handed a microphone for her character Tina's pivotal season 2 moment, she immediately started panicking.

Curmudgeonly chef Tina began Hulu's award-winning dramedy as stubbornly resistant to Carmy's (Jeremy Allen White) vision for Chicagoland food spot The Beef. But the Latina line cook soon gained respect for him and his plans to revamp the restaurant into fine-dining establishment The Bear in season 2. She even accepted his assignment to go to culinary school to hone new skills armed with his own personal knife, even though it meant putting aside her pride and learning alongside much younger peers — something her co-worker/friend Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) just couldn't do.

It all culminated in episode 5, "Pop," where her hard work paid off in more ways than she ever expected. She excelled in class, earning the praise of her teacher and fellow students who invited her out for celebratory drinks. Season 1 Tina would never have accepted their invitation, but this new and improved sous-chef swallowed her fear and anxiety, showed up, and then stunned the entire bar with her powerful and moving karaoke performance of Freddy Fender’s "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." But Tina's moment of triumph was actually terrifying for Colón-Zayas to film.

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"I freaked out because I don't do karaoke! I don't sing," the actor, 52, tells Entertainment Weekly. "And I thought I had mentioned this to [showrunners Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo], so I thought I was being pranked when one of the producers was like, 'You're going to do karaoke.' I was like, 'Nope,' but then it was in [the script] and I got really nervous."

What helped Colón-Zayas get past her fear and nerves was Storer's explanation that the scene wasn't about how well she can sing, since Tina isn't supposed to be an amazing performer. She's a normal person doing something she's never done before. "It's about stepping out of our comfort zone," she adds. "It's not about how well we do it but the courage to do it. It's part of the genius of [Storer and Calo], that they believe in us in ways that we don't see in ourselves, and I think that's essential to the show, that belief and creating tribes of people that will support you."

It wasn't just the idea of singing that had Colón-Zayas feeling the pressure. It was also the knowledge that this was the moment she had been building toward, with her evolution from a contrarian to Carmy — "I like that word," the actor quips, adding it's a "very civilized word for Tina" — to now fully buying into how he views the restaurant and her own potential. It was a long, nuanced journey that Colón-Zayas understood deeply and felt was earned for the hardened character.

"We will continue to learn more, at some point, about Tina's survival skills and her trauma — she had to adapt to become a product of her environment, and that was real male-dominated," Colón-Zayas says. "With all of the changes going on within the restaurant, I feel like she wasn't entirely wrong with wanting to know that [the staff] was not going to be dispensed with and that Carmy's not going to leave. Despite all of the toxicity, we stay with each other and we hold each other up."

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Watching how chef de cuisine Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) "won over" Tina throughout season 1 and 2 was a joy for Colón-Zayas, because it showed a real empathy that she wishes was more prominent in onscreen stories. "Ageism is real. Gentrification is real. Having to compete with younger people who have credentials beyond whatever Tina would have is terrifying," the actor explains. "I mean, come on, in most spaces, me and Ebra would be written out and written off."

First Mikey (Jon Bernthal), then Carmy, and then Sydney instead "created this space for all of us broken toys, and was able to recognize, through all the mess, who deserves a second chance," Colón-Zayas says. "I so completely relate to that, as a woman of color of a certain age in this industry, to be experiencing what I'm experiencing now with [this show]. I fully get it. And all of those things, all of those twists and turns, are central to leading to me having the courage to step up on that stage [to sing]." She pauses before adding, "I hope we can normalize these kinds of storylines so that this is just the beginning."

Even before Tina gets onstage, the seemingly small act of her simply showing up to the post-class drinks is a huge moment of growth for her. "Tina's courage in accepting the challenge of these kids — is it a pity invite because I just happened to be standing there?" Colón-Zayas says. "Okay, well I'm still going to show up, because I have to be able to keep up and I have to show I'm not afraid."

That feeling hit deep for Colón-Zayas. "As an actor, as a human being, I tend to be suspicious, like, 'Really? Am I getting set up?'" she says. "When you're struggling long enough, you always think that, or that you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And this is what makes Tina tick, what keeps her up at night. Somebody may have a really crusty, unpleasant exterior, but can we take a moment, see what's really happening deeper? I hope that's what audiences walk away with, because it's vulnerability, right? And as we get older it's harder to show that."

That's why she's not upset when fans of the show tell her they "couldn't stand" her in season 1, because she knew that Tina's tough, unlikeable persona was just hiding something much more relatable underneath.

"Those are always the more interesting characters, and it means a lot to me as a woman of color to play that," Colón-Zayas says. "I'm not afraid of playing messy characters as long as I know that there is an arc and we're going to understand more about why she is the way she is, and then I'm down. It was very important to me to get that confirmation that there is more there, and we'll learn it in time. And we're still going to learn a lot more about Tina in the future."

Tina's rarely-seen softer side came out a lot in this episode, particularly as she worried about Ebra after he stopped showing up to culinary school. "Tina can easily be him — on some level, I feel like we deserve more," the actor says. "Ebra served as a soldier. We're at a certain age, we don't have a lot of extra opportunities like this. And I know that in the way that I'm stubborn, I get that he's stubborn, and this could be humiliating — but if we get through it, it'll be amazing."

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When he finally does return to The Bear, hat in hand, ready to accept his new position at the restaurant, Tina accepts him back with open arms — but not without giving him a little grief first. "When he comes back to that window, I've got to give him crap, because that's our love language, but there's nobody else I want to be there, because we do deserve this opportunity," Colón-Zayas says. "And I've known Edwin Lee Gibson for decades, so we naturally had this air where we like to annoy each other. That tough love easily translated."

But while Ebra didn't take to culinary school, Tina soared as she learned new skills and techniques. That meant a lot of prep work in the kitchen before filming. "I wanted to look like I had been doing my homework at culinary school, so there was a lot of work for that," she says. "I wanted kitchen workers to be like, 'Okay, for where she's at, not bad,' and I think I succeeded."

She felt less confident when it came to filming that karaoke scene, however, because she was singing live on set, without any kind of prerecorded track. "Ain't got no autotune on this?" Colón-Zayas says with a laugh. "Come on! But that was the point, to have that rawness of being in it, and it was a profound choice by Chris. But they just threw me in the deep end."

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She remembers warming up all week in her bathroom at home — "My poor neighbors!" — but still feared she would be "terrible." And she will never forget how it felt filming that scene in a bar full of extras and crew members as her captive audience.

"I really wanted to have a shot of something, but I couldn't because I was at work," she says with a laugh. "In real life, I definitely would've had a few, a little bit of liquid courage to get me up there. It's a bar full of young people, and I don't sing, so I was so afraid of being lousy. It was just weird hearing my voice coming through a speaker, and it's not cool equipment, it's bar equipment. I was just breathing through it and staying present with memories and how I got there, all of the internal stuff that we artists have to draw from."

But just like Tina, Colón-Zayas conquered her fears and emerged triumphant. "I'm always my worst critic, but I was real proud of how well it all turned out," she says, before adding with a laugh, "Well, I was proud and mortified."

The Bear is available to stream on Hulu.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.