After more than 30 years of career in the industry, Liza Colón-Zayas has learned to make peace with uncertainty and the unknown. Before fame, she estimates that she was rejected at least a thousand times. Despite that, she managed to maintain her career during that time with small roles in well-known series such as Law & Order: SVU, Sex and The City either Dexter. He also had a prolific and acclaimed career in the New York theater scene, where he starred in a highly acclaimed production with a modern twist in 2009. Othello alongside Oscar winner and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Ten years later he took the independent scene by storm Big Apple with his performance in Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven (Half-bitches go straight to heaven). But it was not until 2022 that success and media recognition knocked on her door.
“I just had to hold on to the fact that I knew deep down that I had something special. I don’t know how I did it,” the actress says via video call. Even with her extensive experience on the stage, New Yorkersmany agree that Tina Marrero’s role in the acclaimed series The Bear It is the one that elevated her, at 51 years old, to another category in the industry.
She wasn’t at all sure the role was for her. She auditioned during the pandemic through a self-recording. She didn’t have the script or a description of who to address in the scene and she didn’t know what the show was about. She acted on impulse and magic happened. Two years and three seasons after the start of The Bear —and filming her fourth—, Colón-Zayas has been nominated, for the first time in her career, for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy. She shares the award with great actresses she admires and respects, such as Carol Burnett and Meryl Streep, nominated for Palm Royale and Only Murders in The Buildingrespectively. Along with her, the series she is part of has received 22 nominations from the American Television Academy.
The Bearwinner of four Golden Globes and six Emmy Awards during its first two seasons, follows Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a young chef trained in fine dining, who returns to Chicago to take over his family’s sandwich shop The Original Beef of Chicagoland following the death of his older brother. He will seek to transform the business into a fine restaurant with his family and his team in a dysfunctional kitchen, while dealing with his own traumas.
Within this dynamic, Colón-Zayas plays Tina, a character whose origins or motivations are unknown at the beginning, but with whom, despite her enigmatic past, the actress was able to find her way. Throughout the three seasons, Tina has gone from being a reticent, combative and stubborn line cook to becoming the sous chef, matriarch and the Latin heart of the restaurant. It is not until episode six of season three, titled Napkinswhen we discover the story of this 46-year-old woman who, after 15 years in a company, is fired from her job while the rent rises, the expenses accumulate and the opportunities are scarce or non-existent after a certain age in a labor market that rejects her or is indifferent.
Colón-Zayas, who knows what it means to struggle and persevere, finds common ground with her character. “I have that connection in my story, with the struggle to live, to get a job and to prove my worth. It’s taken me a long time. So I totally understand what Tina’s struggle was like. I’m not saying that I have the dedication, the commitment and the sacrifices that restaurant workers make. I’m not saying that mine is as hard, but it hasn’t been easy, so I’m very grateful that it has resonated with so many people,” she explains.
The episode, also directed by Ayo Edebiri — who also plays Sydney Adamu, a chef and Tina’s colleague on the series — puts Colón-Zayas in the spotlight with a remarkable performance in one of the strongest and most moving episodes of the season. “When I found out that Ayo was directing the episode and I finally got the script, I was emotional and cried a lot. Tears just came out. I didn’t know anything about her story because Tina was introduced to me, like the rest of the world, as this terrifying person. And seeing so much humanity and normality was very moving for me. I think for a lot of other people, too.”
Colón-Zayas believes that Tina has won the hearts of a large part of the public because of what she represents. She is a middle-aged, working-class Latina with the opportunity to pursue a dream without being presented in fiction in a stereotypical way. She does not represent the typical story of how the character transforms into someone attractive so that her value can be seen. The actress, a Bronx native of Puerto Rican descent, sees that the engine of the United States resembles people like Tina; and that they deserve “more credit” for what they have contributed and have to offer.
“The backbone of America has always been brown and black people. They are the indigenous people. African slaves built this country. And so we are at a point in our existence where all of that history is being banned or denied. We raise their children. We cook their meals. We farm their fields. We do it all. I think people like Tina are the backbone of this country,” she adds.
Colón-Zayas, who attended culinary school throughout these three seasons, was able to introduce Napkinsthrough cooking and as a tribute to her heritage, a meal that is important to her in one of those moments when her character shines: Puerto Rican sancocho (although it is not specifically mentioned). “It is a Caribbean soup in which you can put everything. And when you get home, it smells like Christmas. It smells like all those good memories. That is one of my favorite things,” she admits.
Her Puerto Rican heritage and the importance of voting
Despite its trajectory of more than 30 years in LAByrinth Theatre Companywhich was founded in response to the lack of diversity in mainstream theatre, still admits to getting nervous, whether on film, where she recently lent her voice to an animated character in the film Ifin which she shares credits with Phoebe Waller Bridge and Ryan Reynolds; on television or even on stage. The actress attributes this feeling to a matter of commitment to art, to the work and the characters she has in front of her. “I am always nervous because I care. I want to do the job and give it all the layers of emotion it deserves.”
Theatre has been and is everything to her. It is a discipline that has given her the quality of recognising that she has something important to share and that it is good to take risks. “The theatre taught me to be attentive to the people around me, to listen to them. We have a lot of rehearsals unlike television or film. It was like a training camp to really hone my craft and learn to work together,” she says.
Colón-Zayas has learned over the years to value and preserve her Puerto Rican essence, even though she has missed out on much of her culture and history due to being born in the United States. “I have learned how much we have contributed to this country historically. I have learned about our rich history, our strength. I love living in a city with a large Puerto Rican, Latino, Caribbean community, which reminds me and brings me that joy and pride. Especially now that there are some in this country who try to take that away from us. So I am grateful that my grandparents, during the short time I had them here in New York, embodied that feeling,” she says.
The actress is not lukewarm. She has expressed her political opinion on issues that are part of the conservative agenda, such as her position on the revocation of the constitutional protection of the right to abortion (Roe v Wade) or her clear and open support Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. And just in case it wasn’t clear, she doesn’t mince her words in some of her posts on Instagram: “I block and delete all pro-Trump trash. No debates allowed.”
