The Bear Family Tree: Every Brother, Uncle, Mother & ‘Cousin’ Explained
Ever since it premiered on Hulu in the summer of 2022, Christopher Storer’s comedy-drama “The Bear” has been an enormous hit for both the streamer and every single person involved with the production, winning audiences over with its fast pace, outstanding performances, and, truthfully, its beautiful shots of food. The series has been racking up Emmy and Golden Globe wins left and right, with stars Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bacharach, and Ayo Edebiri picking up individual trophies for their lead performances alongside the show’s wins for best comedy series at both the Emmys and Golden Globes. There’s no question that the ensemble cast — all of whom play larger-than-life, often intense characters — is the key to the success of “The Bear.” So how do all of the characters on the show know one another? That’s actually a relatively complex question.
Despite the fact that characters on “The Bear” throw around words like “uncle” and “cousin,” not every single person on the series is actually related, but there are distinct ways in which all of the characters are connected. In case you can’t figure out who’s a “cousin” and who’s an actual cousin on “The Bear,” here’s a breakdown of the family trees and important figures … with some exceptions. Though Edebiri’s Sydney Adamu is a vital part of the show, her family isn’t central to the overall narrative; the same is true of other major characters Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce), so we won’t be delving into their respective lineages here.
The Berzattos are the first family of The Bear
Though you meet most of the major Berzatto family players in Season 1 of “The Bear,” the sixth episode of Season 2, “Fishes,” brings the entire family together in a flashback that ends in complete and utter disaster. The three Berzattos you most need to know are the ones featured most prominently in both seasons. First, there’s protagonist Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a chef who trained in Michelin-starred restaurants before returning to Chicago to take over his late brother’s sandwich shop; that late brother Michael “Mikey” Berzatto is played by Jon Bernthal in multiple flashbacks, but dies by suicide before the story officially begins. The third sibling is Natalie Berzatto (Abby Elliott), often called “Sugar,” who ends up helping Carmy transform the sandwich shop into a fine dining establishment named The Bear.
The rest of the Berzatto clan appears in “Fishes,” and to put it politely, they’re a chaotic mess. The matriarch of the family, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), is an angry, troubled woman who deeply resents Carmy for “leaving” her behind to work abroad in Copenhagen — and ends up driving her car into the side of the house at the conclusion of Christmas dinner. As far as secondary and tertiary Berzattos go, there are plenty, including the siblings’ actual cousin Michelle (Sarah Paulson), her boyfriend Stevie (John Mulaney), and Donna’s boyfriend Lee (Bob Odenkirk), whom Mikey absolutely hates.
Words like cousin and uncle are thrown around quite a bit on The Bear
Despite the fact that Richard “Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachararch) is constantly referred to as “cousin,” particularly by Carmy, he’s not related to the Berzattos by blood; he was simply Mikey’s best friend before the eldest Berzatto son died. When Carmy moves back to Chicago at the beginning of Season 1, Richie is completely against the idea of working to create a more upscale atmosphere, frequently raging at Carmy about changes to The Original Beef of Chicagoland, Mikey’s old shop. During Season 2, though, Richie undergoes a transformation in the seventh episode, “Forks,” when he stages (or trains) at a high-end restaurant in Chicago and learns that fine dining can be an incredible experience for an upscale restaurant’s guests. From there, Richie becomes an indispensable part of “The Bear.” Richie is occasionally flanked by his ex-wife Tiffany Jerimovich (Gillian Jacobs) and their daughter Eva (Annabelle Toomey in Season 2).
Then there’s Jimmy “Cicero” Kalinowski, called “Uncle” by just about everybody — including Richie and Carmy — who happens to be the main investor in The Bear and a close friend of Carmy’s late father. He, Lee, and the deceased Berzatto patriarch once went into business together, but the details feel purposefully murky, as if the audience isn’t supposed to quite know what the trio was up to. Cicero is a direct yet sometimes difficult man, but he still is there to lend a hand to the Berzattos as they try to get The Bear up and running.
Other Chicago families orbit around the Berzattos
Surrounding the Berzattos and Jerimoviches is the Fak family, primarily made up of Neil (Matty Matheson), who’s known Carmy and his siblings since they were all young, and his brother Theodore (Ricky Staffieri). Theodore isn’t on-screen as much — though he’s an erstwhile mechanic for The Bear as it prepares to open — but Neil is an integral part of the entire operation, working as an overall handyman for the restaurant. (It’s also worth noting that Matheson is a chef in real life who operates Prime Seafood Palace in Toronto, frequently working out of the Canadian city.)
Then there’s Claire (Molly Gordon), who hasn’t been given a last name just yet but orbits the Berzattos as a former childhood friend … and Carmy’s childhood crush. When the two reunite as adults in Season 2, they strike up a romance after years apart, and though it seems to be going well, it’s quite clear that Carmy frequently lets his stress over the restaurant interfere with this relationship. This all implodes during the season two finale, also titled “The Bear,” when Carmy gets stuck in the restaurant’s walk-in freezer and has a complete breakdown over the state of his career and the fact that he doesn’t think he can maintain his relationship with Claire — unaware that she’s listening on the other side of the door. Audiences will just have to wait until Season 3 to see what happens to Carmy and Claire’s relationship (and luckily, filming is underway).
The first two award-winning seasons of “The Bear” are streaming on Hulu now.