The normality that Ayo Edibiri (Boston, USA, 28 years old) boasts, and not on purpose, is about to become extinct.
She's so, so normal, that in Hollywood she would be almost a freak.
Upon winning the Golden Globe for best lead actress in a comedy for
The Bear
, she thanked “her agents and her assistants”: “To the people who write me emails, you are the best, I am extremely grateful.”
On the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, Edebiri did the makeup for actress Rhea Seehorn, from the series
Better Call Saul
.
They weren't together, they had barely exchanged a word, but the one from Boston warned her about a spot under her eye and she fixed it.
At the same awards, when asked what young Ayo would think and dream of if she saw her there, winning awards, she answered: “I wouldn't dream of nights like this.
I would dream of simply having dental coverage.”
No prizes on the living room shelf.
“We have dental insurance, vision insurance, hearing insurance.
We can go to the dermatologist! ”She got excited, before recommending viewers not to miss her annual doctor's appointment to look at her skin.
It might seem like a joke on the part of a comedian who, despite her youth, has been writing scripts for a decade, providing voices for animated characters and participating incessantly in series and films;
in fact, half of her nearly thirty performances took place last year.
It is the reality of a woman who has gotten here with a lot of work behind her, but almost by chance.
She, who intended to be a teacher and studied for it, landed in
The Bear
, an unpretentious series and, thanks to the uncanonical tandem that she forms with Jeremy Allen White, she has earned a place on Olympus.
The role of her organized and methodical cook Sidney, opposite the somewhat lost and overcome Carmy in her disastrous sandwich shop in Chicago, has already given her the Golden Globe, the Emmy and the Critics Choice (awarded by the Hollywood Critics Association ), as well as nominations for People's Choice, the Screen Actors Guild Awards or the Bafta, as an emerging actress.
And on Saturday she became the host of the veteran comedy show
Saturday Night Live
, where Jennifer Lopez performed.
More information
Three golden globes and a French omelette: how the series 'The Bear' has become a global phenomenon with controversy
She continues to appear surprised in her public appearances.
In several interviews she has acknowledged feeling uncomfortable in a place that does not seem to belong to her.
It is at that moment of the leap in which a normal girl becomes an actress, even if she is dressed in Louis Vuitton, with a touch of naivety that mixes with maturity in her scripts and performances.
So much so that she has decided to resign from
Thunderbolts
, Marvel's next installment, to be present in other projects.
Agenda problems that she fixes with conscious decisions, for which she prefers to follow her own path without fear of resignations of such caliber.
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But for Edebiri this path of fame and success is being an extra gift.
She started a decade ago as a production assistant, bringing and bringing coffee, and this year she has participated, in addition to
The Bear
, in almost fifteen projects, including a dozen series.
She is one of the protagonists of the comedy
The Fighters Club
(along with the model Kaia Gerber or her good friend and colleague Rachel Sennott);
she has provided voices in
Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
and the Oscar-nominated
Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse
;
and she has participated in award-winning series such as
Colegio Abbott
and
Black Mirror
, as well as in
Big Mouth,
where it has been in thirty episodes.
Going from writing the
Dickinson
series , her first major project, focused on the life of the 19th century poet Emily Dickinson (but with many nods to the present day) to being Missy Foreman-Greenwald in the animated series
Big Mouth
brought her her first bits of fame... but also its first problems.
The fiction is designed for adults and has sometimes been controversial (it deals with adolescence, with topics such as masturbation, first sexual relations, drugs...);
In addition, the role of the mixed race Missy was played by the actress Jenny Slate, white, who decided to leave it at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
All of this has made Edebiri face certain threats that have even affected his parents, which is why he has preferred to keep their names anonymous.
Ayo Edebiri chats animatedly with actor Bradley Cooper at the AFI Awards, held at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, on January 12, 2024. Michael Kovac (Getty Images for AFI)
The only child of a mother from Barbados and a father from Nigeria who have been accompanying her during the awards season, Edebiri is very close to her parents, who raised her in Dorchester, a middle-class neighborhood.
Her mother was very religious and went to the Pentecostal church with her every Sunday;
The Bible inspired her to write and develop stories.
Her father, not so much: with him she became fond of watching movies.
Now that her role is that of a cook, she has sometimes stated that her mother is the one who knows the kitchen best.
When she left Boston for New York to study and try to be a teacher, her parents encouraged her, she told
The New Yorker
, but it took them a little longer to process that she was moving first to writing and then to acting.
“Now it is very comforting to see that they know what I do.
They're always like, 'Just to confirm, you won't back down?
Are you determined?
Are you okay? ”She commented with the publication.
“It probably wasn't her dream to immigrate to this country and have your daughter tell you: 'Well, I want to dedicate myself to improvisation.'
That improvisation started thanks to her then partner Rachel Sennott, who introduced her to the New York stand-up comedy and
stand-up scene.
A perfectionist and hard worker, she interpreted her writings and got the bug.
She went from place to place, up to three times a day.
She also got into screenwriting with Sennott in what started as a comedy duo and ended up being a three-episode series in 2020,
Ayo and Rachel
are
Single
on Comedy Central.
Although almost five years have passed since that time, some of her followers on social networks do not seem to know how to distinguish reality from fiction or understand that the two have a partner: Sennott, the actor Logan Miller, and Edebiri, the comedian Colin Burgess.
In several of her interviews, Edebiri explains that it is strange for her to be an actress, and that she never believed she fit into the Hollywood standard, that she did not see herself as having the charisma or the appearance for it: “I wanted a real job that would give me money".
Not only has she achieved it, but she has become an actress respected by her co-stars and by critics.
At
The Bear
everyone has good words for her, for her capacity for effort, her control of the situation, her attention to detail and her encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.
She has trained with Allen White in a hospitality school and both have worked in kitchens to get to know the routine and spaces;
She has learned to appreciate the work that is not seen in the hospitality industry.
“When they come up to me in a restaurant and say, 'Do you know how to cook?', I tell them 'I can't help you today, I'm off,'” she joked in a chat with
The Hollywood Reporter
.
All while maintaining normality and knowing the extraordinary nature of his position: “I like my job.
I feel that it is a real privilege that I like what I do and feel that it is a challenge, and I just want to continue working, continue learning,” she stated in that interview.
“This is my main goal right now.”
Because dental insurance has already achieved it.