“Hello, Vogue. I’m Ayo Edebiri, and tonight—or today, whatever time it is when you’re watching—I’m gonna be cooking you dinner.”
So begins a delightful new episode of Now Serving with, yes, the Emmy-, SAG-, and Golden Globe-winning star of The Bear and Bottoms. “I’m often wearing Valentino dresses when I’m cooking things casually in my home,” Edebiri jokes, drifting around the kitchen set in an off-the-shoulder, feather-trimmed black dress that somewhat restricts the movement of her arms, but she loves nonetheless. “Sydney’s going to look like this for Season 3 of The Bear.”
On Edebiri’s menu is a very fancy-sounding but ultimately pretty straightforward miso butter pasta with furikake breadcrumbs—a favorite dish of hers when she has people over, though it usually isn’t more than four or five people, because cooking in front of an audience stresses her out. Well, you’d hardly know it: After running through the ingredients (pasta, olive oi—wait, no, that’s actually rice vinegar, parmesan, butter, lemon zest), Edebiri gets cooking.
Between chopping chilis (with a cleaver named Donna) and waiting for the butter to brown, the actor and writer recalls the prep she did for The Bear—learning knife skills and getting over her fear of heat were most of it—and hosting Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago, after which she watched her mom party until dawn. (Her dad, meanwhile, “was, like, fully falling asleep, eyes open at the club. It was actually pretty sick.”)
Waiting for the pasta water to boil gives Edebiri time to mix a little cocktail—namely, an Umeshu Highball, because she doesn’t really like drinking alcohol, but when she does, she prefers it to “taste like juice.” The rest of the video is a joyful flurry of falling gel lights, vaguely Australian-accented English, and our star realizing, for the first time in her 28 years, just how much she has in common with Emeril Lagasse. Get into it all above.
Director: Nina Ljeti
Director Of Photography: Riccardo Mejia
Editor: Katie Wolford
Producer: Gigi Chavarria
Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg
Associate Producer, On Set: Sydney Malone
Assistant Camera: Jon Corum
Gaffer: Dmitry Labzin
Audio: Paul Cornett
Production Assistant: Brock Spitaels
Makeup Artist: Dana Delaney
Hair Stylist: Miles Jeffries
Wardrobe Stylist: Danielle Goldberg
Wardrobe Assistant: Gemma Valdez
Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Entertainment Director: Sergio Kletnoy
Director, Content Production: Rahel Gebreyes
Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson
VP, Digital Video English: Thespena Guatieri
Filmed at Historic Hudson Studios