Ayo Edebiri – Funny Girl

The Bear made Ayo Edebiri a Hollywood darling. Now she's making Hollywood worth our attention.

- By Leah Faye Cooper. Photographs by Renell Medrano

"I Was grocery shopping yesterday, and I was like, 'oh my God, my life's about to shift and I don't know in which direction.'"

AYO EDEBIRI IS explaining the shock of her fame to me over a spread of duck pot pie (hers) and Caesar salad topped with rib eye (mine) at Chicago's Armitage Alehouse. (Our food belongs in this celebrity interview because, well, The Bear.)

"I don't know what to do about oat milk because I'm nervous about the glucose. Girls on Instagram are saying it's spiking your glucose. I'm thinking about...going back to Lactaid." Edebiri clips through thoughts one-on-one much as she does in her comedy-effusive and giddy, hand gestures and laughs and wide eyes punctuating every point.

Throughout dinner, the newly minted star's hot takes include that Marshawn Lynch is "going to win a Nobel Peace Prize" one day (the former NFL running back played a teacher in Edebiri's campy, queer coming-of-age comedy Bottoms), and that lying makes for the best comedy. While deliriously tired at the South by Southwest premiere for Bottoms, Edebiri told reporters that she was from Ireland. She's not; she was born to a Barbadian mother and Nigerian father in Boston. But the internet ran with it, and Edebiri fully committed to the bit, with shout-outs to Ireland on numerous occasions. (And she remains committed. She told me that she has Irish relatives on both sides of her family, and who knows, maybe it's true.) She attributes all of this to her "silly little brain." Days after our interview, I find a selfie of Edebiri making a ridiculous face on my phone. I have no memory of her snapping it.