Liza Colón-Zayas will co-star in FX’s The Bear, a half-hour comedy about a young chef who returns to Chicago to run the family restaurant. The series, also co-executive produced by Emmy-nominated Joanna Calo, will premiere in 2022.
The Bear features Shameless alum Jeremy Allen White in the leading role starring along with Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Girls), Ayo Edebiri (Dickinson), Lionel Boyce (The Jellies!), Abby Elliott (No Strings Attached), Edwin Lee Gibson (Fargo) and Matty Matheson (It’s Suppertime) and Colón-Zayas.
Originally and mainly a theatre actor, New York City-born and raised Colón-Zayas has also developed a film and television career. She was most recently prominently featured in the fourth season of the HBO Max series In Treatment, where she played the recurring role of therapist Rita Ortiz, the Alcoholic Anonymous sponsor of the lead character, Dr. Brooke Taylor. Colón-Zayas is also known for her roles in the OWN series David Makes Man, HBO Max series Titans and the Netflix film The Woman in the Window.
Colón-Zayas began her career starring in off-Broadway productions, including Sistah Supreme, a semi-autobiographical play chronicling her upbringing as a Latina in the Big Apple during the 1970s and 1980s. Other stage credits include Our Lady of 121st Street and In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings.
While working in theatre, the New Yorker also started building a career in television and movies, primarily in small roles. She’s been featured in series like New York Undercover, Deadline, Third Watch, Sex in the City, Law and Order and Dexter and films like The Keeper and Freedomland.
Today, she remains a member of New York’s LAByrinth Theatre Company, originally known as the Latino Actors Base Theatre Company, in which she’s a member of the Leadership Committee. Last year, she won the Audience Development Committee’s Viv Award from for lead actress in a play for Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, presented by LAByrinth and Atlantic Theater Company. The same role earned her the Obie Award from the American Theatre Wing and the Village Voice, which honors excellence in off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theatre.
“We are so grateful to FX and overjoyed we get to tell more stories from this world,” says co-exec producer Calo. “And while this cast is talented enough to make standing silently in an empty space riveting, we can’t wait to get to work in the writer’s room.”
Calo, who is reportedly half-Mexican, is known for her work on Netflix’s animated series BoJack Horseman, in which she wore several producing hats from 2016 through 2020, as well on HBO Max’s 2021 series Hacks. These two series earned her three Primetime Emmy nominations. Other credits include series like Amazon Prime’s 2019 Undone and Netflix’s The Babysitters Club. Also a screenwriter, she has contributed in that capacity to several episodes of those four shows. Calo is featured in the recently published book Notes From the Bathroom Line: Humor, Art, and Low-grade Panic from 150 of the Funniest Women in Comedy by Amy Solomon, a producer of the hit HBO shows Silicon Valley and Barry.
In addition to Calo, The Bear is executive produced by Hiro Murai (Atlanta, Station Eleven) and Nate Matteson (Station Eleven), Christopher Storer (Ramy) and Josh Senior. Matty Matheson is a consulting producer.
“The Bear delivers thanks to the ferocious performances of Jeremy Allen White and fellow cast members Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Lionel Boyce, Abby Elliott, Liza Colón-Zayas, Edwin Gibson and Matty Matheson,” says Nick Grad, FX president of Original Programming. “The series gets off to a fantastic start in the pilot and we know this creative team including Hiro, Nate and Joanna has the comedy chops and producing experience to deliver the latest in a storied line of FX comedies.”
Featured Photo: Liza Colón-Zayas (Credit: David Zayas Jr.)