‘Gary’: Jon Bernthal & Ebon Moss-Bachrach On Writing ‘Gary,’ Richie & Mikey’s Friendship, ‘Punisher,’ ‘Fantastic Four,’ & More [Interview]

“The Bear” has always understood that some ghosts do not need much screen time to haunt every room. Michael “Mikey” Berzatto (Jon Bernthal) has been one of the show’s most powerful absences from the beginning, a figure audiences know through grief, memory, myth, and the damage he left behind. The new surprise special episode, “Gary,” gives that absence a little more shape. Co-written and co-starring Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the flashback episode follows Mikey and Richie on a work trip to Gary, Indiana, before the events of Season 1. What starts as a loose, funny, two-guys-in-a-truck hangout slowly reveals itself as something more bruised and tragic, showing both the joy of their bond and the darkness already gathering around Mikey.

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The special episode premiered as a surprise drop on Hulu and Disney+ for fans on May 5 and adds emotional context to Richie, Mikey, and the central wound at the heart of “The Bear.”

In the conversation below, Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach sit down with The Playlist’s Mike DeAngelo to discuss how the episode came together, why they wanted viewers to feel like a “third idiot” in the car, how much of the episode was scripted versus improvised, and the importance of showing Mikey and Richie’s joy before the pain. They also briefly touch on their Marvel futures, including Bernthal’s imminent return as Frank Castle and Moss-Bachrach’s continued interest in exploring Ben Grimm.

This “Gary” Special Episode is a wonderful surprise, so congratulations on it. I love that it makes the audience feel like the third idiot in the car with Richie and Mikey before things get personal and dark. Was that the goal from the beginning, to have it feel less plotted and more fly-on-the-wall?

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: For me, I would’ve been very happy for that episode to never even make it to the bar. I was just interested in spending time with these two guys and seeing the nature of this friendship, the volatility of it, the strange, tenuous place that both of them are in.

They’re both in very different parts of their lives. Mikey’s darkness is starting to creep in. It’s starting to pour in, whereas Richie’s starting to open up. He feels like his career’s on the up and up. He’s deeply in love with his wife. He’s having a kid. He’s gonna be a great dad.

So this precipitous moment for the two of them, it’s pretty interesting to go on a ride and hang out in the car with them. For me, I would’ve been really happy to just sort of spend the day. That’s maybe not great TV per se, but there is this event, and I’m really glad you felt like the third idiot because that was definitely the intention.

Where did the “Gary” germ of the idea come from? What was the moment when you felt like, “This is something we should write and do together”?

Jon Bernthal: Ebon and I have been talking, just on our own, about stuff that we really wanted to do with these two characters if we ever had the opportunity. We went to [Christopher Storer] and pitched a loose idea of maybe working some of this stuff into the season. We’re such dear friends and have known each other for so long.

This is a relationship we got little pieces of in “Fishes” and just for a tad in “Napkins,” but I just wasn’t there that much. If they were gonna have Mikey, maybe it could be this? We pitched it to him, and kind of insanely, Chris was just off the jump like, “Yeah, let’s do an episode. You guys want to write it?”

It’s one of those moments where I remember exactly where I was when that happened. We got off our conference call with Chris, and we immediately called each other. We were like, “Are you kidding me?” We knew how incredible this opportunity was.

I want to say, it’s such a testament to the kind of artist that that guy is. I’m there so infrequently, and I’m always working on something else when I go there. It is always the most refreshing, most beautiful vacation from whatever hell trap I’m working on because it is so collaborative, it’s so open, and it’s so good.

It’s so rare that something is so sacred and important and personal and thought out and worked on as this show is, but at the same time, so enormously fluid and open and positive. I love going there. This thing was, I can say for a fact, a dream experience for both of us.

Was it originally part of the final season and then peeled out as its own thing, or was it always going to be its own separate episode?

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: It took a little while to figure out. We were interested in this one day, and the decision of where to put it was not really our decision. Not that I’m unhappy. I think, actually, by design or through whatever chaos or imaginations of the studio, I’m really happy with where it wound up, in between seasons four and five. But no, that wasn’t really up to us.

What was the writing process like together? Were you trading scenes, getting up on your feet, talking through memories, improvising on the page, or on set? How much of it did you do together?

Jon Bernthal: Kind of all of the above. We’ve known each other a really long time, and we’re very close, and we’ve worked together a lot. I don’t know that there’s anybody whose taste I trust as much. I don’t know another artist that I trust as much. We can really tell each other anything. He calls me out on my bullshit, I call him out on his. We’re also, I think, each other’s biggest fans too, without sounding like a total cheesedick.

So many things that I’m most proud of, it seems like the things that have been the best are the things that are kind of the easiest, that just sort of, we’re in this natural flow state right from the beginning.

Honestly, man, we did a reading of “Dog Day Afternoon,” the play that we’re doing right now in Midtown Manhattan. We left and walked down to my hotel on the Bowery, and we literally came up with this whole thing on that walk. We just sat on my balcony, and we jotted it down. That structure really became what this thing was.

Then, as far as implementing the dialogue and the music and the ideas and the specificity, that just came after time, going back and forth, sending each other pages. “Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?”

All the way up until we got there, we would ride to set together every single day, and it was just a constant conversation, based on trust and personal experience. I really knew the things that were important to Ebon, and I think he really knew the things that were important to me.

I don’t think there was ever anything like, “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” It was all like, “Yeah.” It was just very positive. It was exactly what we wanted it to be.

It somehow feels like you’re just these guys on the fly, improvising. How much of it was dialogue as written versus you going off?

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: There’s very little just going off.

Really?

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: Yeah. I think the only thing that’s really sort of open on the page is when we were outside the little bodega with the 40s. We pulled over, and Chris was really happy about how it looked in the parking lot back there. So he was like, “Let’s just do a scene. Why don’t you guys start talking about different kinds of karate kicks?” So that was that.

But everything else is pretty scripted. My big speech that Richie has about his tutor and his math tutor was all written. That’s a real event that happened to Jon. That’s a true story, but that whole speech is all pretty written. There are maybe a few things that change from take to take.

I’ve said this before, I think a lot of the strengths of “The Bear” that makes it seem quite improvisational and spontaneous and vérité in a way is not really from the writing or the acting, but from the camera and the way the camera is. It just feels, like you say, like you’re this third idiot in the cab of the truck, just peeking in. So I think a lot of that gives it a more listening-in kind of feel.

In most of the Mikey flashbacks, you understand why people loved him so much. This one feels different because you can see him change at the drop of a hat, almost like his mother. What was important to you about showing the dark weather system hanging over his head?

Jon Bernthal: I think exactly what you said, but I also think one thing that we worked really hard on and was absolutely necessary, and I think also lends itself to the third idiot in the car, is that the only person who knows what happened that day is Richie. Everything is through the lens of memory.

You can’t really create that storm. You can’t really create the impact of how deep that wound is for him, for Mikey to turn the way that he turns once he gets these substances in him, the things that he says to Richie, which he can never take back, the depth of the wound of that, the depth of the pain with that, if you don’t have the real joy and the laughs and the two 12-year-old boys having this great day together.

That was always really important for Ebon and something that he was always pushing for. We really got to see these guys laughing. We really got to see these guys having fun. We really got to see that the power of somebody who is in a dark place and who knows where he’s headed, that there is one person really on this earth that can get him out of it. That can get him to smile.

And that put the thought into one of the things I find so beautiful about it: it’s revealed through the calls with Tiff, and also in the intentionality of his making the mix. Part of this thing is that he’s aware of the place that Mikey’s in. He’s talking about it with his lady. He wants to cheer him up. He knows this needs to happen.

Then, when you couple that with the fact that the only person that Mikey can really open up to is this stranger on the bathroom floor, I think there’s just something about that that is so honest to us and really, really tragic.

You’re not only writing for Mikey, but you’re also writing for Frank Castle. And Ebon, obviously, you have a foot in that world as well. Does anything change for you when you’re writing characters you’ve acted for years? And was there ever a conversation where it’s like, “Hey, can we circle Micro back into the story?”

Jon Bernthal: I’d cut my arm off to do it. Look, this guy’s going on to way greener pastures. I don’t know where I would act.

But look, it’s a joy, and I love it. I think he loves it. I love doing it with somebody I love this much and respect this much. The process of writing this thing versus the process of writing “The Punisher,” it really couldn’t be more different.

All I can really say is gratitude and joy. I love the process. I’m thrilled that we’re getting these opportunities.

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I’m really excited to see how The Punisher fits into “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” just because he and Spider-Man are so different. Spider-Man has this big heart, and The Punisher is this darkness. What excites you about putting Frank into Peter Parker’s world?

Jon Bernthal: Look, I’m thrilled to work with Tom. He’s another guy that I love and have known since he was 17.

For me, I think with the special that’s coming out, I’m pretty confident that’s gonna be the darkest and most psychologically complex version of Frank that you’ve ever seen. And I believe that you can’t really have “Brand New Day” unless you have “One Last Kill.”

I think what was important to me, and what I talked to Destin about, and that I hope we were successful at, is that you believe that one guy could have walked off one set and walked onto the other, even though obviously, they are on different ends of the spectrum and the piece itself is quite different.

Ebon, so much of Ben Grimm is inside the rock: the grief, the humor, the loyalty, the stubborn heart of him. What part of Ben are you most excited to explore in the future that you haven’t gotten to touch on yet?

Ebon Moss-Bachrach: I feel like we’re just getting started. I think he’s such a fascinating character. Also, certainly, the time of his inception, when he was first written in whatever, 1961, when Jack Kirby first wrote him, I think he’s definitely the most human and complex and conflicted comic character that point had been written.

I don’t know, it’s inexhaustible. There’s the self-loathing and then the responsibility—this sort of endless cycle.

I’m always more interested in the terrestrial things and how a man in a massive rock sarcophagus can reconcile his human desires and needs. That’s to me the most interesting part of it. The punching’s good too, I guess.

“Gary” is on Hulu and Disney+ now. The fifth and final season of FX’s “The Bear” premieres June 25 on FX and Hulu.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.