Ebon Moss-Bachrach Reveals What Influence The Bear Had on His Marvel Role (The Answer May Surprise You)

Though on the surface it doesn’t seem like Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s characters in The Fantastic Four: First Steps and The Bear may have all that much in common, they do share one similarity: they both love food. Moss-Bachrach’s character Richie on The Bear is the maitre d’ of the show’s fictional restaurant, and it turns out that Ben Grimm/The Thing also knows his way around the kitchen. ComicBook’s Chris Killian asked the Emmy-winning star of the upcoming Marvel blockbuster if there was any crossover between Moss-Bachrach’s two characters; however, the actor maintained that Ben’s love of food came from his perspective on The Thing, rather than his four seasons on The Bear.

“I think that there was always something to me that seemed so kind of domestic and in the kitchen about The Thing,” Moss-Bachrach told Killian. “I think that being inside the Baxter Building, being home, is the only place that he can relax.”

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It makes sense. Ben is the member of The Fantastic Four who is most outwardly changed after the team’s exposure to radiation in space, and the superpowers each member receives as a result. All four members become celebrities after that fateful space mission, yet Ben is permanently transformed into The Thing. And though Moss-Bachrach jokes that Ben brings “exfoliation” to the Fantastic Four’s group hugs, it stands to reason that the Baxter Building not only serves as Ben’s residence in First Steps, but his refuge.

“I imagine he spends a lot of time in that kitchen,” Moss-Bachrach went on to say. “He’s also a pretty big guy. He’s probably got…I think he’s got an appetite.”

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The Fantastic Four Are a Family

In further contrast with The Bear and other MCU teams, Moss-Bachrach also pointed out how well the Fantastic Four get along with each other, and how essential each member of the quartet is to their success.

“You take away one of these characters and it’s like taking a wheel off of a car,” Moss-Bachrach said. “The whole thing kind of doesn’t work. They love each other deeply, and they’ve loved each other since long before they had any kind of powers or global responsibility.”

While there’s certainly a lot of love between the staff of The Bear, they’re also a chosen family riddled with dysfunction. It appears that isn’t so much the case for the Fantastic Four in the upcoming film, even though Moss-Bachrach’s character is the only member of the team that isn’t related by marriage or blood to another member. It’s another way Ben is similar to Moss-Bachrach’s character on The Bear, however. Both Ben and Richie are members of the family without a blood relation. While Richie has confirmed on The Bear that he’s never been able to shake the feeling of being an outsider, we’ll have to wait and see if, as well as how, that dynamic plays out in First Steps, especially since Ben also has an external reason to feel like he doesn’t belong.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps flies into theaters Friday, July 25th.