LOS ANGELES — Edeviri Ayo has an eye-catching screen presence because she doesn’t look like she’s acting. In her frenetic restaurant drama The Bear, one of the summer’s most talked-about shows, she’s usually calm at the center of the storm.
In real life, she is the same, unpretentious, unobtrusive, and speaks in a uniform tone. In other words, she’s not the kind of person who breaks into a series of practical anecdotes when reporters show up.
On a hot day in Los Angeles, she was standing outside an apartment complex in the Los Feliz area, waiting for her puppy, Gromit, to go to work. She then picked up what he had left in the grass with a biodegradable green buggy.She searched the trash but could not find her.
Gromit is a small dog with black and white fur. He’s part Chihuahua, minikin and part terrier, Edeviri said, adding that he’s tested his DNA, so he knows the mix.
“He’s a melting pot,” she said. “I think he’s the American Dream.”
Edeviri, whose first name means joy in Yoruba, grew up in Boston, sang in church choirs, and performed in congregational plays. When she was 26, she became known as an actress after writing for television for several years and working as a stand-up her comic and podcaster.
“I love doing shows,” she said of “The Bear.” “Even when we were making it, we felt it was really special and honored. “
people got it. And they responded to her character, cold-hearted sous chef Sidney Adam.
Gromit started moving towards the shards of glass in the street. “That’s glass,” Edebiri said calmly. “We’re not doing that, dude.” She gave the string the gentlest tug and Gromit heeded her orders.
Before “The Bear,” Edeviri loved making roast chicken for friends. While preparing for her position, she took courses at the Culinary Education Institute in Pasadena and accompanied several chefs in Chicago and New York. And yes, she learned how to prepare the cola braised ribs that became her character’s obsession.
“I made a lot of it,” she said. “It was a lot of practice. It has to look real. And if you practice it, you might make it taste real.”
In addition to her work on ‘The Bear’, she played Hattie on the AppleTV+ show ‘Dickinson’. She also provides the voice of Missy Foreman-Greenwald, a mixed race girl about to hit puberty in the Netflix animated series Big Mouth. In her acting career so far, the characters she plays seem to deal with anxiety by putting up her brave front and share a quiet confidence.
“You don’t have to dig deep to access that anxiety,” she said.
For a while, she said, she was ready to accept that she didn’t have what it took to be a performer.
“I remember singing in the choir and doing plays. This may not be your gift,” Edebiri recalled with a laugh. “She was like, ‘You’re good, but this might not be for you.’ I was like, ‘Sure.'”
During junior high and high school, he changed his mind and started improvising. She then went to New York University with the intention of becoming her teacher, but she realized it wasn’t for her. At the urging of her college friends, she started doing stand-up.
“I was definitely nervous about the idea of performing alone,” she said. “I don’t like being on stage and I was very nervous at first.”
After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles to write on the NBC sitcom ‘Sunnyside’, the FX series ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and ‘Dickinson’. Leaving the comfort of the writer’s room to go in front of the camera was a big adjustment, she said.
“Weird,” she said. I don’t want to make myself a myth, but growing up on TV, I actually felt like I looked like me or someone I knew. , or I feel like there weren’t many young black women allowed to have… imperfection.”
“There are a lot of black women on television in the media,” she continued. I feel that it is important and beautiful. ”
She entered Bru, an airy coffee shop, and ordered a lavender lemonade with sparkling water. “I’m not used to answering questions like an actor.”
Soon, Edeviri and Gromit step into the Skylight Bookstore, a privately owned store with a giant fig tree surrounded by walnut-coloured shelves. She came across The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories by the late Finnish author, illustrator and cartoonist Tove Jansson. She tapped the cover with her index finger, which was adorned with a rustic gold signet her ring that read “Libra.”
“She rules,” Edebiri said, picking up the book. “She’s like this incredible lesbian who made the Moomin comics.”
As Edeviri turned to the register, she was asked if she wanted to go back in time and give her younger self some advice.
“I don’t think I’ll say anything because that would mess up the rules of time travel,” she said.
Near the cash register, I found a cookbook edited by Bryant Terry called Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes Across the African Diaspora. She placed Gromit on the register table with a Tove Jansson book before crouching down to open her cookbook.
As she flipped through the pages, her dog was becoming the star of the store. After Ms. Edebiri left the cookbook near the register, one of her employees began reading to Gromit from Jansson’s book.
“He likes it,” Edebiri said with a laugh.