The Bear did not disappoint with those celebrity cameos during season 3.
Hulu released the third season of the hit series on Wednesday, June 26, with several familiar faces such as Joel McHale, Will Poulter, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Mulaney, Olivia Colman and Gillian Jacobs returning in minor roles. Fans were still in for some surprises, though, when Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) met his ex Tiffany’s now-fiancé, Frank (Josh Hartnett).
Nothing could have prepared Us, however, for the moment John Cena was introduced as Fak’s (Matty Matheson) brother Sammy.
“Hey! Anybody seen a ghost?” Cena’s character said before immediately getting into it with brother Ted (Ricky Staffieri) over some missing SD cards. “Well, now I gotta haunt you. Somebody when he least expects it, I’ll do something weird.”
Cena, 47, played a pivotal role throughout the remainder of the fifth episode as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Richie got nervous about the restaurant being photographed following a secret review. Sammy was meant to come help his siblings buff out the floor, but he was subsequently asked to do an even bigger favor by going out to buy them a duck to cook.
The Bear, which debuted in 2022, has had more trouble keeping story lines under wraps while its popularity skyrocketed. Season 3 was notably plagued by several leaks after fans saw the cast filming in different parts of Chicago.
“It’s one of those things where we are in public sometimes and I think it’s a little annoying,” Matheson, 42, exclusively told Us Weekly in March. “But we’re in a city that we love and people happen to walk by. And they walk by the moment we are outside.”
The actor acknowledged that sometimes there was no way to avoid the attention, adding, “I think maybe we can be a little more secretive. Maybe not just stand outside all together. But we’re all such good friends that it seems chill to be honest.”
Matheson, who is also an executive producer and culinary consultant, noted that those weren’t the only complications.
“Last season, I think doing the ‘Seven Fishes’ [episode] was a crazy thing,” he shared about the cameo-filled episode from season 2. “Making all that [onscreen] food and executing that was really fun and really memorable. Making that house so chaotic was a really special moment.”
At the time, Matheson reflected on the conversations that take place about food continuity on the show.
“[We spoke about], ‘Do we use real shellfish? Is it going to look stupid? Can we get away with using fake food?’ A lot of TV shows use fake food. We do everything real. So it’s always just such a learning experience,” he continued. “Sometimes you are doing 10, 15 [or] 20 takes … then [you are] just resetting everything. You got to get everything to look messy, but then you got to [have] everything [look] normal because it gets messier in the scene. There’s so much hard work [when] you are planning that out.”
He concluded: “There’s a lot of things like that that people probably don’t think about. But just as the room changes, the food is changing. We need to make sure that it’s always at that same moment. Just continuity is the hardest thing, to be honest. … We really work hard on trying to keep continuity and stuff like that in a good place.”
The Bear is currently streaming on Hulu.
