‘The Bear’ Breakout Lionel Boyce Had ‘Much More Respect’ for Main Cast After Marcus-Centered Episode (2024)

When “The Bear” actor Lionel Boyce found out about his first-ever Emmy nomination, he was mid-REM cycle on an early flight.

“I was asleep, and I woke up to a text,” Boyce tells Variety. “I didn’t buy Wi-Fi, and I forgot to put my phone on airplane mode, so I got a random text saying, ‘Hot damn!’ I woke up all confused, and there were a couple of people on the plane who knew, so they said, ‘Congrats’ and stuff.”

While he was still groggy, one of the flight attendants asked him how he felt: “I was just like, ‘I don’t know, I’m gonna take this piss because I still don’t really know what’s going on, and I’ll tell you later.’”

Boyce, who plays pastry chef Marcus in FX’s “The Bear” and also goes by L-Boy, says it was “weird, but sick” discovering that he had received a nomination for best supporting actor in the series, one of the show’s 23 total Emmy noms, breaking the record for the most nods for a comedy, previously set by “30 Rock.”

He’s up against “The Bear” co-star Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who plays Richie), Tyler James Williams (“Abbott Elementary”), Paul W. Downs (“Hacks”), Paul Rudd (“Only Murders in the Building”) and Bowen Yang (“Saturday Night Live”) in the category.

“It’s been a really cool thing, where you reach something that you thought [only] lived within an imagination,” Boyce says of the nomination. “And you get there, and it becomes real. It makes you say, ‘Anything that I think I can do, I can.’”

The Season 2 “The Bear” episode titled “Honeydew,” which showcased Boyce, mostly focused on Marcus’ personal and professional growth. In it, Marcus is tasked with creating three desserts for the in-
the-works Chicago restaurant run by Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri).

He leaves his bedridden mother and Chicago for Copenhagen, where he stays on a houseboat and works alongside pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter) in a Danish restaurant.

“It was cool to be front and center for an episode and to get to understand and experience what Jeremy, Ebon and Ayo are carrying through every episode of the show,” Boyce says. “You know there’s an actor carrying it, but being in the driver’s seat for a moment, for, like, 22 minutes, made me say, ‘Wow, they’re carrying much more than this.’ I have much more respect for them.”

Ramy Youssef, who nabbed a directing nom for the episode, had different interests while directing, like ensuring that Copenhagen itself was a character. “It was a different group of people,” Boyce says. “It’s like this was our own little thing separate from the show.”

While “Honeydew” was a big turning point for Marcus in the second season — his mother passes away in the finale — Season 3 kept the ball rolling on his development, leaving him to deal with the aftermath and his ever-growing grief.

“You’re watching growth in real time with his work, and you’re also watching this human grow,” Boyce says. “Where you meet him in the pilot is the essence of the same person, but [he’s] a different person now at the end of Season 3.”

Marcus finds solitude and support in his co-workers, Boyce says, because most of the characters on the show have experienced loss in some form.

“It just helped showing this kind of person that you love and that feels so warm … going through this,” he explains. “All these characters reflect different people in all of our lives. So, everyone who feels like that person or knows that person, watching [Marcus] going through pain, makes you consider them for a moment.”

Even though this is his first nomination for a comedy series, Boyce isn’t new to the genre: he was part of the musical group Odd Future — which boasted artists like Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean and
Earl Sweatshirt.

And while he never worked on any music, he did appear in plenty of sketches and had a hand in the collective’s Adult Swim comedy show, “Loiter Squad,” which aired for three seasons.

“Getting to do the show for Adult Swim was just me diving in headfirst and being like, ‘Oh, I enjoyed doing this, I really like this,’” Boyce says. “It just turned into a passion from there, and I just kind of never looked back.”

He notes that the show has changed the trajectory of not only his life, but everyone involved.

“You’re just getting to observe things firsthand in every way, and there’s so many things from that that I’ll take moving forward,” Boyce says. “That’s been my experience on the show overall. Every season, every day I’m there, it’s a new learning experience.”

Season 3 of “The Bear” leaves the restaurant’s future up in the air, with Carmy reading a critic’s review of the restaurant in the Chicago Tribune that can neither be decoded as good nor bad, and Syd contemplating whether or not to leave and join a new eatery.

As for Marcus’ role in keeping the Bear afloat in the next season, it’s pretty straightforward: Get the desserts on the menu and keep cranking them out.

“It’s the gift and the curse, where Carmy’s like, ‘You’ve proven yourself to be at a level where I think you can take the reins, come up with some ideas, and put it on the menu,’” Boyce says. “It’s a restaurant; it’s not just a one-time thing. That’s the main difference between Seasons 2 and 3 to me. Season 2, we’re building to the moment of this restaurant opening, so you have time to perfect everything. Then Season 3 is like, OK, now it’s open and you have to keep it at this level. It’s a whole new challenge.”

For now, the actor is in the dark for what’s to come for Marcus, as he hasn’t seen any Season 4 scripts yet.

“Just as a fan of the show, I’m excited for where it goes,” Boyce says. “Every season, I’m always just like, ‘Where are they going to take this next?’ And I’m always happy with where they take it. So, I’m just like, ‘Let’s see.’ As generic as an answer it is, it’s the most honest one for me, because I’m a fan first.”