Mark Consuelos Pitches Jeremy Allen White on a Guest Arc For Him and Kelly Ripa on ‘The Bear’: “A Married Food Critic Couple Come to Your Restaurant”

By Alex Vena

Mark Consuelos has an idea up his sleeve for The Bear Season 5, and who better to pitch it to than Carmy himself, Jeremy Allen White?

White appeared on Thursday’s Live with Kelly and Mark, where Consuelos recalled the Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere star’s first interview after The Bear premiered in 2022 being with Kelly Ripa on Live.

“And Kelly, you were so, so lovely,” White gushed. “You had seen it, and I knew you had seen the whole thing.”

Consuelos, who along with Ripa is a fan of the hit FX series, remembered stopping by to see White.

“I wasn’t working here,” he reminded White. “I showed up just to meet you.”

At the time, Ripa was co-hosting Live with Ryan Seacrest, as White recalled this morning.

“But I do remember meeting you afterwards,” he told Consuelos.

Ripa said she and Consuelos binged The Bear “like pigs.” While she praised the dramedy’s “incredible ensemble cast,” she said “the depth” of White’s performance particularly stood out to her.

“It’s something that just drew me in and I couldn’t not binge it,” she explained. “I had to binge it… You can do more sitting still and not saying anything than any other performer I’ve ever seen before. You’re extraordinary.”

After White thanked Ripa for the compliment, Consuelos brought up The Bear Season 5, which White confirmed will start shooting in Chicago in January.

Photo: ABC

Consuelos teased of the Windy City, “It’s nice then.”

“January, February. That’s when we like to shoot the show. Yeah no, it’s a pretty miserable time of year to be there. But man, I love that city so much. And that show, those actors, I think you had Ayo [Edebiri] on [Live] as well,” he told Ripa and Consuelos. “Like right before then. I just, I love them so much.”

White said that he and his co-stars all stay in the same long-term housing while filming, noting that “there’s enough of [them] where [they] take up one floor pretty much.”

“So it’s like me and Lionel [Boyce] and Ayo and Matty Matheson and Courtney Storer, who are great chefs,” he shared. “They’re cooking, and we’re going to dinner at each other’s places. We’re going to the gym together. We’re reading lines.”

Ripa quipped, “And are you screaming at them?”

White joked, “I’m just yelling at everybody the whole time.”

Consuelos asked, “Is everybody saying, ‘Yes, Chef’ the whole time?”

After White teased that there’s “a lot of ‘Yes, Chef,'” Consuelos took a moment to run an idea by him for the new season.

“Can I pitch something to you?” he asled.

White replied, “Please, yeah.”

“Season 5. A married food critic couple come to your restaurant,” Consuelos explained, pointing to himself and Ripa. “Married food couple critics.”

White teased, “I see what’s going on.”

While Ripa teased that she thought Consuelos and Seacrest would play the couple that her husband was envisioning, Consuelos clarified that he meant the two of them, and White was pretty fond of the idea.

“We’d love to have you guys. We’d be so lucky, truly,” he said.

Live with Kelly and Mark airs on weekdays. Check out their website for your local listings.