Actress Abby Elliott is basking in the afterglow of a much needed mini vacation. After wrapping the fourth season of “The Bear” in Chicago, she headed straight to New York to catch up with old friends, see a Broadway show and model piles of gorgeous jewels as our cover star. She was dazzled by all the bling; she was transformed by the solo nights at her hotel. “I got 11 hours of sleep one night,” the mom of two young kids marvels. “It was unbelievable!”
Back home in Los Angeles, she jumps on Zoom with Alexa to talk gems and caftans, improv and impressions, and the singular emotional support to be found in a ladies’ text thread. She dropped hints about what’s to come on “The Bear,” as well as in a new miniseries she’s in with “Succession” star Sarah Snook.
Snook, as it happens, is the star of the play Elliott saw, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” an edgy, glittery new rendering of the Oscar Wilde novel. “She was just incredible!” Elliott raves. “Like, blew me away. The energy that she’s exuding! Spectacular.”
Elliott matched her co-star’s sparkle on her shoot with us. “We were in this beautiful, vacant penthouse down on Leonard Street,” Elliott shares. “It was so grand and opulent! I’m not used to wearing stuff like that, and it was fun to play dress-up.” Spring is in the air, and Elliott was feeling the flowy dress vibes. “There was a really cool pink Ferragamo caftan, and it was kind of this big tent, but it was also a bubble. After having two kids, I love tents and caftans!” she says. “And doing up my hair, and the jewels, it felt so far from who I actually am, and so fun to play that character.”
When she’s off the clock, Elliott stays true to her Connecticut sartorial roots. “Button-downs, trench coats, a really nice pair of jeans,” says the actor, who’s wearing a wide-striped, pink and white Oxford as we speak. She also favors the LA athleisure uniform as, she points out, “I’m always being spilled on.” Elliott and her husband, TV writer Bill Kennedy, welcomed their son William in June of 2023; their daughter, Edith, was born in 2020.
“Saturday Night Live” alum Elliott, 37, hails from a storied comedy pedigree: Her dad is Chris Elliott, lately of “Schitt’s Creek” fame, and her grandfather was Bob Elliott, half of the radio comedy duo Bob and Ray. Elliott cut her teeth in LA taking classes at the Groundlings, then performing at Upright Citizens Brigade before being hired for “SNL” in 2008. She popped up in cult-comedy series in the years following her 2012 departure, including “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Garfunkel and Oates,” “Difficult People” and “Search Party.”
For the past four years, she’s been a key player in a beloved show nobody can agree how to categorize: Is it a comedy? Awards shows say so, but much of the show’s trauma-based subject matter argues otherwise. The new season, due out in June, seems likely to continue fueling that debate.
The show’s set, and shot, in Chicago, and Elliott enjoys rubbing elbows with the locals and frequenting her own favorite eateries, while bringing her kids along.
“In Chicago they’re just so generous and so welcoming,” she says. “We had a crazy day where we had flown in, and we brought the kids to Hugo’s [Frog Bar & Fish House], which was a mistake,” she continues, laughing. “Because we had just gotten off a four-hour flight. And we were like, ‘Woo! Let’s go get martinis!’ So we go in there, and my son absolutely lost it. He wanted the fish that was on the wall, and he would not let it go. And then my daughter got sick. It was a whole thing.”
At this point, one has to imagine, the cast of “The Bear” is kind of Chicago royalty. After putting the city’s Italian beef on the international map, winning 21 Emmys and breaking a record last year for 11 wins for a prime-time comedy, they’re far from flying under the radar like they did when the show was starting out. “My dad watched the pilot,” Elliott shares. “Chris [Storer, co-showrunner of ‘The Bear’] was like, ‘Don’t show it to anybody!’ But I thought, I have to show it to my dad. And he was like, ‘This is like ‘The Panic in Needle Park!’ It’s so different, so gritty.’”
I ask what, if anything, Elliott can tell me about where the show picks up. “Not really!” she says apologetically. “We kind of know these characters now, and we love them, and it goes more into who they are, and their relationships, and trying to make this restaurant work. It’s beautiful and chaotic. Is that saying something without saying anything?” One thing that’s sure to be a through line is the palpable tension vibrating through each episode. “Watching how the trauma manifests itself years later is something a lot of people relate to,” Elliott shares.
She occupies a singular spot in the roiling chaos of “The Bear,” as Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto, sister to Jeremy Allen White’s volatile Carmy. “I think she’s so tough with everything she’s gone through,” Elliott says of her character. “She’s an absolute empath. She’s always aware and listening, and kind of letting Carmy figure it all out.”
Elliott shone in two of the show’s most memorable episodes, Season 2’s “Fishes” and Season 3’s “Ice Chips.” The former introduced Jamie Lee Curtis as the wildly unstable Berzatto matriarch, losing her s–t while cooking the Feast of the Seven Fishes. “Ice Chips” sees Curtis and Elliott reunited as Natalie goes into labor and can’t get anyone on the phone except her mom. “You know, you’re intimidated by the thought of working with Jamie Lee Curtis,” Elliott muses, “and then she’s just the polar opposite of intimidating. When she’s on set, she’s a mama bear to everybody.” Except, she adds, “when she gets that wig on, forget it!”
Next up for Elliott is “All Her Fault,” a miniseries she spent four months in Australia shooting before her latest Chicago stint. Based on the 2021 Irish crime novel, it’s a “twisty thriller,” Elliott says. Jake Lacy (“The White Lotus”) plays Snook’s husband, and Elliott plays his sister. “She’s impulsive, childlike, very different from Sugar, which was really fun.” Elliott’s family joined her for that shoot, too, and Aussie native Snook took them all under her wing. Elliott’s son and Snook’s daughter were close in age, so “we got together and did fun Melbourne things. Went to the zoo. She showed us all over.”
Elliott will not be doing an Australian accent, she says, as she’s playing an American. For this, she is thankful. “I cannot do an Australian accent. It is so hard for me,” she insists. She swears she’s done with impressions, too, though during her “SNL” run she added some indelible ones to the show’s canon (her Meryl Streep is impeccable). Now in her mom era, she’s been happy to fall out of touch. “Like, I don’t have a good Sabrina Carpenter impression!” she says with a laugh. “Every day there’s a new famous person I don’t know.” After a moment’s reflection, she admits with a grin: “I guess I broke into a Jennifer Coolidge the other day, after a couple glasses of wine.”
But she finds her improv training continues to be useful — as well as connecting her to her dad’s early career. “Before he got a job working as a tour guide at Radio City Music Hall, he was in an improv group that performed in restaurants,” she says. He told his daughter it’d be a good skill set to develop. “I mean, in life, we’re constantly improvising,” Elliott says. “I think everybody should do it. It really helps me with public speaking.”
Does she see herself sticking with the hybrid genres that keep everyone guessing? “You know, I thought ‘Succession’ was really funny. I think ‘White Lotus’ is funny. With the shows I want to do, it’s not one way or the other,” she says. “Because you could have, like, the saddest day of your life, and there would still be comedy in it, yeah?”
She finds the funny amidst the grim in real life, too. “We’re in this sad, dark, place in history. And some days I want to just be under the covers, and other days I’m like, send me all the memes,” she says. “I have my text thread with my suffragettes, and we’re sending each other things and laughing. We have to.”
She’s also taking courage from Sugar’s ability to navigate the clashing emotions surrounding her on all sides on “The Bear.” “I really hate conflict,” Elliott admits. “I’ve had to work on that, because I can be very passive. I went to Catholic school, and I was taught to behave and to keep my mouth shut. But Sugar picks and chooses when she does want to say something, when she wants to speak up. I really admire that about her.”
ON LOCATION: Our cover shoot took place in Penthouse West at the luxurious 108 Leonard building in Tribeca. This extraordinary “Clock Tower Penthouse” — developed by Elad Group and now on the market for $19.25 million — sprawls across 8,770 square feet and two floors. There’s an additional 3,082 square feet of exterior space with panoramic views in all directions. With five bedrooms, five full bathrooms and two powder rooms, the home boasts soaring 15-foot ceilings, walls of oversize arched windows that bathe the home in natural light, a double-sided fireplace and a private elevator. Original handcarved eagles and gargoyles perch on the private terrace’s balustrade. For the ultimate NYC bragging rights, an antique spiral staircase leads to the iconic clock tower itself. More information at [email protected] and 212-775-1080.
Photographer: Eduardo Rezende; Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Hair: Brian Magallones for Tracey Mattingly using milk_shake; Makeup: Christopher Ardoff for Art Department; Manicure: Kylie Kwok for Tracey Mattingly using CND; Fashion Assistants: Jena Beck, Meghan Powers, Lee Christmas
