The Bear’s Matty Matheson is opening up about his first encounter with “big mama” Jamie Lee Curtis before her cameo on the series.
“It’s crazy,” Matheson, 42, told Variety in an interview published on Thursday, June 27. “The first time I saw Jamie was at the Golden Globes or something, before she came on the second season. We were in the ballroom, and there weren’t a lot of people in there.”
Matheson said he asked The Bear series creator Christopher Storer, “Can I just go up and say hello to her?”
“And he was like, ‘For sure! Go say what’s up!’” Matheson recalled.
He added, “As I was walking up to her, she pointed at me and was like, ‘I know who the f—k you are! Get over here!’”
The duo “just hit it off” from the star, with Matheson gushing that Curtis, 65, is “so sweet.”
“She’s our big mama,” he added. “She hangs with us the whole time, even when she’s not on screen. Being around someone like that, a true icon, is amazing. Trading Places is my family’s movie. We loved that movie growing up. Never in a million years — and now we’re friends! We’re texting! She really is an incredible person.”
Matheson has been on The Bear since season 1, which premiered in 2022, playing the role of Neil Fak while also serving as a culinary consultant and producer on the show.
Curtis, for her part, appeared on the second season of the FX Original series as Donna, the Berzatto family matriarch. She briefly returned in season 3, which debuted on Wednesday, June 26.
Last month, Curtis told The Hollywood Reporter that “none of us said a word to anyone” about her cameo, noting that the producers “changed the name on the buses, the vans — the call sheets didn’t have our names on them.”
She added, “We flew to Chicago. There was no connection back to the show. There was no word ‘Bear’ anywhere near me. I stayed at a hotel, the hotel didn’t know who was paying for my room. It was a secret until the day it dropped.”
The series stars Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a chef who takes over his family’s Italian beef sandwich shop in Chicago. Winning 10 Primetime Emmy Awards in its first season, the show has also earned four Golden Globes, taking home Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy earlier this year.
