The Bear's Liza Colón-Zayas on scarcity, struggle and the strict 'cult' that tried to brainwash her

21:37Liza Colón-Zayas: Finding family and stability on The Bear

There are many reasons why audiences adore Liza Colón-Zayas's character, Tina Marrero, on The Bear. Firstly, Tina is a confident, fully-realized middle-aged woman who you don't often see on screen. Secondly, you find yourself rooting for her as she learns news skills and reinvents herself from a tough line cook to a proud sous-chef.

That theme of reinvention mirrors Colón-Zayas's own story as an actor. Born in the Bronx as the youngest of five children, she says she knew from an early age that she wanted to be an actor, she just never saw a path forward. Her parents were separated and money was always extremely tight.

"[My family was] just trying to survive," Colón-Zayas says in an interview with Q's Tom Power. "There was no extra money for hobbies and acting class or any extracurricular activities. No one on TV looked like people in my family. My mom always believed in me though. Somehow she always believed me … but still, I didn't have a mentor in that way."

As a '70s kid, TV was her escape. Colón-Zayas even wrote a letter to the producers of the hit sitcom The Partridge Family asking them to consider her as a replacement for the red-haired, tambourine-playing Tracy Partridge.

"I wanted to go live with this family who played music and traveled around in a multi-coloured bus and lived in sunny California," Colón-Zayas says. "Everything looked so harmonious and very different from where I'm from…. Then my brother found the letter and I was mortified because he made fun of me so bad. That put that whole plan on ice."

At first it was great … but I was being groomed.- Source

Failing to join the Partridge family, Colón-Zayas began searching for something else that could provide her with the harmony and stability she craved. At 16, she joined an evangelical Protestant Christian group called the Church of Bible Understanding, which she believed offered another kind of family.

"At first it was great," she says. "They were helping me with my homework, I was no longer failing, my mom was really excited to have them come over and read the Bible — but I was being groomed."

Colón-Zayas says as soon as she turned 18, the church picked her up in a van and took her to Philadelphia with her belongings packed up in a garbage bag.

Describing the group as a cult, she says they slowly broke her down using subtle mind control techniques, such as isolating her from her family and preventing her from sleeping by strictly regimenting her schedule. In addition to doing chores, recruiting for the church and completing Bible study, Colón-Zayas also worked full-time at a bakery, which she loved, despite being forced to surrender all her wages.

"This is the danger of extremist, fanatical beliefs," she tells Power. "While I was gone, I missed my family and I had these dreams that I wanted more. I couldn't come to terms with my gay loved ones being sent to hell, that was just too much. Thankfully, eventually, little by little, I was able to find communities of people and get educated and find courage."

After leaving the religious group, Colón-Zayas says there were still many detours on her path to becoming an actor. She eventually returned to New York, settled on a theatre career and found her artistic community. She remembers struggling to book acting gigs and owing her roommate almost two months' rent before landing "the corniest infomercial" at just the right time.

"It was always scarcity, it was always struggle," she says. "That's why, to this day, I'm still like, 'Live simply, count your blessings, take it a day at a time.' Because even still with the success I'm having it's like, how long is it going to last?"

Colón-Zayas won outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series at the the 2024 Emmys, recognizing her performance in Season 2 of The Bear. You can watch Season 3 of The Bear now on Disney+.

The full interview with Liza Colón-Zayas is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Liza Colón-Zayas produced by Vanessa Greco.