After she stepped onstage, the first words Liza Colón-Zayas spoke to the audience of television luminaries in front of her and to the millions watching at home were disarmingly charming: “Thank you for lowering the microphone for me.”
Though she’s decidedly petite, Colón-Zayas’s stature in the entertainment industry had just grown exponentially: The UAlbany alum became the first Latina to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, recognizing her star-making turn on the acclaimed TV series “The Bear.”
Legends Meryl Streep and Carol Burnett, two of her competitors in the category, cheered enthusiastically from the front row while many in LA’s Peacock Theatre gave her a standing ovation. Colón-Zayas explained that she hadn’t prepared an acceptance speech because she didn’t believe she would win. “How could I have thought it would be possible?” she asked the adoring crowd.
As a hard-working actress on stage and screen for the past 30 years, Colón-Zayas’s path to this surreal, shining moment has been long and winding. Though well known in New York City theatre circles – where she’s received numerous awards, including Obie, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel – she’s largely been relegated to smaller, “day player” roles in TV and film.
That all changed when she was cast in “The Bear,” which tells the funny, sad and often intense story of a young chef trying to transform his family’s working-class sandwich shop into a fine dining restaurant. Premiering in 2022, the Hulu show became an instant hit with fans and critics, pulling its largely unknown cast into the spotlight.
“I feel like I’m in a dream, and my alarm is gonna go off any second!” said Colón-Zayas when we talked just a few weeks before her September Emmy win. “To this day, I never take for granted that I could make a living at this so I’m always on the edge of ‘what could go wrong.’ But I feel a little more confident now.”
Colón-Zayas references the word “family” a lot.
She used it to describe her feelings about “The Bear’s” cast and crew. That’s how she termed her experience in the theatre department at UAlbany, and how she felt about LAByrinth, the Latino Actors Base (LAB) theatre company in New York City that she helped form with fellow alum Stephen Adly Guirgis ’92 and others. When asked what inspired her early interest in the performing arts, however, she named an entirely different and perhaps surprising family.
“I wanted to join The Partridge Family” said Colón-Zayas with a laugh. “They looked like the ideal family, they played music and I was like, ‘That's who I'm gonna go live with.’”
The TV sitcom songsters and their multi-colored bus were a world away from Colón-Zayas’s childhood in the Bronx, where she grew up the youngest of five kids, plus two stepsiblings.
“It was tough – my dad wasn’t really in the picture, we moved around a lot, it was just about getting through the day and putting food on the table,” she said. “But my mom was very loving, and my escapism was playing make believe with friends and watching television.”
Colón-Zayas recalled that she got her first taste of the spotlight in kindergarten, when she and her classmates were on stage for a school assembly. “I didn’t know how or why, but I just knew that my inner ham came alive,” said Colón-Zayas.
As a kid growing up without access to many extracurricular activities, she never considered acting as a career. Despite her proximity to the bright lights of Manhattan’s Theatre District, she “didn’t even know what Broadway was.”
It wasn’t until she arrived at college that Colón-Zayas would find her true calling on the stage.
“At a certain point, I just thought ‘It’s going to be off-Broadway for the rest of my life…and that’s okay,’” Colón-Zayas recalled. “But then I got ‘The Bear.””
When Colón-Zayas first enrolled at UAlbany, she wasn’t sure what major to choose. She selected business because it sounded like something that might help her get a job. It didn’t go well.
“I had no interest in business, and I was the worst student,” she noted. “You wouldn’t want me to run your business!”
While on campus, however, she started attending productions in the Performing Arts Center – particularly a series of performances by guest artists, including ethnic and indigenous women.
“Something blew up inside me,” she explained. “These women had stories to tell, and I had stories to tell!”
Colón-Zayas changed her major to theatre the following semester, but her transition wasn’t easy. “It was the '80s and I was the only student of color in my classes,” she noted. “I felt insecure, I wasn't knowledgeable about theatre and no one in the department knew what to do with me.”
One of her professors gave her a summer assignment to prepare a scene from Shakespeare for the following fall, but Colón-Zayas was having trouble relating to the material. Then she decided: Just be yourself.
“I just threw away the traditional approach and all the things that I thought would make it appropriate and proper – and I did Shakespeare like ‘Liza from the Bronx,’” she recalled. The interpretation was a hit. “I remember my professor saying, ‘Oh my God, that was amazing!’”
With newfound confidence, she dove into her major with full enthusiasm, giving herself the ambitious goal to get cast in an improbable 10 plays before she graduated. In a preview of the passion and determination that would fuel her career, Colón-Zayas met that goal.
Immediately after graduation, Colón-Zayas moved back home with her mother, waited tables and took temp work like many other aspiring artists. But she kept working and creating her own opportunities.
In 1995, she wrote and starred in her one-woman biographical show, Sista Supreme. In 1999, she earned a featured role in In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Over the next two decades, she appeared in more than a dozen shows, primarily off-Broadway.
In 2014, she collaborated with her UAlbany friend, Stephen Adly Guirgis, to star in his play, Between Riverside and Crazy. The collaboration proved fortuitous – earning the prestigious Lucille Lortel Award for Colón-Zayas and the Pulitzer Prize for Guirgis.
She continued to expand her credits in TV and film as well. In 2021, Colón-Zayas got her first recurring role in a TV series with HBO’s “In Treatment.” But it was her role on “The Bear” that truly changed her trajectory.
“Liza was always gifted, even when we were kids,” said Stephen Adly Guirgis, the Pulitzer-prize winning playwright. “She’s just the real deal, and real deals don't come along every day.”
Colón-Zayas and Guirgis first met as students in the UAlbany theatre department and have collaborated many times since – most notably on his Pulitzer-winning Between Riverside and Crazy. But their 35-year friendship actually had a slightly bumpy beginning.
“Stephen wrote a little play when we were just starting at UAlbany. I auditioned for it, and he said ‘You're perfect! I'm gonna call you to just confirm.’ He never called me,” recalled Colón-Zayas. “Then it was really awkward because we started the semester in the same class and I'm shooting death stares at him the whole time. He finally came up, apologized and explained himself. And we became best friends!”
For his part, Guirgis noted, “Since we got out of school, she’s been in almost everything I’ve ever done, so I think the beef is squashed now!” He has not been surprised by her recent success and Emmy recognition.
“They say it takes 30 years to become an overnight sensation,” said Guirgis. “So, Liza is right on time!”
Colón-Zayas’s UAlbany theatre friends reached out to celebrate her Emmy win.
“I’ve had the honor to not only work with Liza over the last 30 or so years, but to call her a friend even longer – dating back to our SUNYA days. She is the embodiment of the ’real deal’ artist who relentlessly, and fearlessly, seeks the truth.” —Actor John Ortiz
“Dear Liza, I’ve known many actors who’ve gone on to win awards, including several last night. I can’t remember being prouder of any of them. You contain such love and strength in your work and your life. Keep on rockin’.” —Actor Glenn Fleshler ’90
“I could empathize with her struggles,” said Colón-Zayas, regarding the “The Bear” episode “Napkins,” in which her character’s backstory is revealed.
Spoiler alert: This part of the interview contains information about Season 3 of "The Bear."
As an actress committed to her craft, Colón-Zayas believes in careful preparation. “You have to find the humanity in each character,” explained Colón-Zayas. “What about this person is relatable to me?”
In the days before she was set to shoot the pilot for “The Bear,” she was having trouble understanding the essence of her character, Tina, the restaurant’s stoic line cook – and why all the alpha males in the restaurant would respect her. A serendipitous stop at a Manhattan pizzeria provided inspiration.
“I walked into a pizza shop and the men working there were casually talking, and then I saw this tiny woman come out of the kitchen,” she recalled. “All the men just snapped to attention. She didn’t yell, she didn’t have to say anything. Then she stomped back into the kitchen. And I was like, ‘Ohhh, that's Tina!’”
A powerful episode in “The Bear’s” third season provided even more insight into her character when we learn, via flashback, how Tina first entered the restaurant. Unemployed and at the end of her rope, she stopped in to order a cup of coffee and was gifted an unclaimed sandwich, which she took into an empty back room. The fiercely strong woman suddenly lost it – sobbing uncontrollably, releasing all the pain and anger she’d been bottling up. Turns out, that scene felt real for a reason.
“I was thinking about my own life, and it wasn't that far of a stretch,” noted Liza Colón-Zayas. “I could really kind of empathize with Tina’s struggles, her doubts.”
Colón-Zayas’s own career has certainly had its ups and downs, but even in her lowest moments, she never considered abandoning her profession. “I didn't think of giving up,” explained Colón-Zayas. “I knew I was good at this – and there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do.”
In the show’s flashback episode mentioned above, we learned that Tina has a loving, supportive husband. So does Colón-Zayas. In fact, her on-screen spouse was played by her real-life partner, David Zayas, an accomplished actor who has had recurring roles on the Showtime TV series “Dexter” and the HBO series “Oz,” among other credits. Colón-Zayas said it helps to have a partner who understands the acting profession.
“He gets it: the work, the pressure, the joy,” explained Colón-Zayas. “We support each other; he props me up.”
Colón-Zayas ’s biggest fan and supporter, however, is her mother, who has been cheering her on from the very beginning.
“My mom always believed in me,” said Colón-Zayas. “During and after college, and all the struggling, she would always tell me ‘You can do this.’ While I was at UAlbany, she even wrote an Academy Award speech for me!”
One of the defining characteristics of “The Bear” is its hyper-real depiction of working in a fast-paced, anxiety-fueled kitchen. There are spills, fires, knife accidents and a lot of colorful language. Colón-Zayas was asked if working on the show is just as chaotic.
“There's energy and excitement, yeah, but it's really love, preparation, respect. And a lot of laughs,” she replied with a big smile. “It's just the best crew and the best actors, and I have so much love for every single person.”
As “The Bear” gears up for its fourth season, Colón-Zayas said her favorite thing about the show and her entire career has been making a connection with fans.
“I love hearing from people that this character is like my aunt or I went through a struggle like that … when it resonates so powerfully,” she said. “It goes back to what I loved doing in childhood – playing make believe. And I feel blessed that I’ve been able to do it.”
