Liza Colón-Zayas has put in the work. In 'The Bear,' she makes every second count

A pivotal moment in the episode, which was directed by Ayo Edebiri (who plays Sydney Adamu in the series), arrives when Tina, after one particularly disappointing day on the job search, steps foot in the show's central sandwich shop. The volume gets turned up, both in sound and grace. She orders only a coffee but is given a free Italian beef sandwich by the boisterous but kind staff.

As she finds a table away from the chaos, she's overcome by the reality of her situation, crying into her food. When Mikey checks on her, it leads to a heartfelt conversation between them — in part, about people who get to live out their dreams and the people who are just trying to survive — that ends with him offering her a job. The scene was shot over two days.

Edebiri says she wanted that moment to feel like viewers were stepping back to Season 1, recalling the noise and frenetic energy, while showcasing Colón-Zayas' prowess as an actor.

"One of the many amazing things about Liza is she's so petite, and so you're about to use this sense of wonder," Edebiri says. "She does a lot of that with just her face and her openness, but Tina's coming from also this really arduous journey of rejection — shocking and demoralizing rejection — and then in this really chaotic and unexpected place she finds warmth."

The scene is also a window into Mikey, whom we've seen glimpses of throughout the series, but his connection to the staff and what his loss meant comes further into focus.

"Mikey is such a complicated character; we see so many different facets of him," Edebiri says. "He's a tough, damaged guy, but he has a lot of love, and invoked a lot of love in people. I think Tina is such an important person to that story."

It gets Colón-Zayas thinking of her own journey to this point in her career.

The youngest of five children, she lived in subsidized housing in the South Bronx with her mother. (Her parents split when she was young, but her father was in her life.) Her gumption revealed itself at an early age. When she was 7, she wrote a letter to the producers of "The Partridge Family" to consider her as a replacement for red-haired, tambourine-playing Tracy Partridge: "I was gonna run away. I was gonna take a taxi, and I was gonna take over because I could play the tambourine much better. Then my brother saw the letter and opened it and read it out loud and made fun of me, and I was mortified. It never got sent." But she found other ways to hone her craft: impersonating Erica Kane, Susan Lucci's character on the ABC soap "All My Children," for guests at her mother's repeated request.

Talking about her early dreams evokes other emotions. At 16, she joined the Church of Bible Understanding, a controversial religious group. When she was approached by members of the congregation on Fordham Road in the Bronx, her family situation was tough. "They seemed very caring," she says.

Describing the group as a cult, she said it encouraged isolation from and distrust of nonmembers. She left home at 18 and was taken to Philadelphia, near where the group was founded. There, she took a training course with the church and recruited for it while also working a full-time job at a bakery. The church kept the money she earned and wouldn't deliver messages or mail from her family.

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