Buffalo's Pat Whalen passes the Chicago test as a photographer on 'The Bear' (2024)

If you haven’t watched the first five episodes of the third season of “The Bear” streaming on Hulu, you might want to put this column aside for reading later. It contains a few minor and harmless spoilers.

Plenty of attention is given to the celebrity cameos on the Emmy-winning series “The Bear.”

He isn’t as famous as John Cena, John Mullaney, Academy Award winner Olivia Colman, Emmy and Tony winner Sarah Paulson or chefs Daniel Boulud and Rene Redzepi, but Buffalo native Pat Whalen has quite a cameo as well.

The 2005 graduate of Williamsville South plays the Chicago newspaper photographer assigned to shoot photos to go with a review of the fine dining restaurant opened by Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) in the fifth episode.

Whalen’s explanation of how he got the role opens a window to see how the show is cast, researched, improvised and becomes all-consuming for the actors.

His college friendship with producer Ricky Staffieri, who plays the youngest Fak brother, Theodore, led to an audition for the role.

“He got me in good graces with casting and so I was able to submit, and I passed the Chicago test,” Whalen said. “They’re hoping to hire folks who are authentically Chicagoan.”

Whalen, who unsuccessfully auditioned in season two for the role of a guy arrested for having too much fun at a party, easily passes the “authentically Chicago test.”

He studied theater at Columbia College in Chicago, became a theater actor there and has a monthly talk show, “Good Evening with Pat Whalen,” that has run for almost 10 years and is available on Apple podcasts.

“It’s like ‘The Tonight Show,’ except it’s funny, no offense to Jimmy Fallon,” said Whalen, speaking via telephone from Maine where he and his father were on a camping trip.

Whalen, who is part of the Jackalope Theater Company in Chicago and works for a state senator and has secured press credentials for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago, explained his talk show is more like the Jack Paar version of the late-night show in its discussions of politics and current events. His guests have included Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, several City Council members and Sarah Sherman of “Saturday Night Live.” He also has musical guests and games for audience members to win sponsored prizes.

“I do a monologue at the top,” added Whalen. “It's just like ‘The Tonight Show,’ except I'm trying to trick my peers into being more civically engaged.”

His acting resume includes a scene in “Chicago P.D.” as a guy whose brother was suspected of a crime and in “Shameless,” the Showtime series that White starred in as Lip Gallagher.

“All these shows shooting in Chicago, it’s kind of like ‘Law and Order’ when you live in New York,” he explained of the casting process.

The cameo in "The Bear" is “a dream come true.”

“I've told them, I'll play a dirty dish rag, I don't need any lines, I just want to put ‘The Bear’ on my resume," he said. "It's a real bucket list item for me to be on ‘The Bear’ and to have a speaking part with Matty Matheson (handyman Neil Fak), John Cena (Sammy Fak) and Eben Moss-Bachrach (Richie Jerimovich) is really a dream come true.

“The script was pretty light on whether or not we would get into talking about the (restaurant) review itself. There was a lot of improvisation on set and as we started to work through the scene a couple times, it became clear that these characters would be very interested to learn from me what I knew about the review and, of course, I would be very reluctant to tell them.”

He did some research with photographers for his role.

“I asked, ‘Is he going to know what's in the review?’ And they said yes, of course, they talk to the writers. Like if they have a good relationship with them, they'll discuss what the restaurant is like. And that, of course, informs what they want pictures of. They're like, ‘sometimes you do, sometimes you don't’ basically, but at the end of the day you cannot telegraph anything to the restaurant. You cannot let them know what's coming. I think at one point I said something (in the episode) directly that a photographer told me about, which is, ‘if you want to read it, you can buy a paper just like everybody else’. So the idea is you are not to be intimidated. You are there to take the pictures.”

Whalen said during his two days on set he rubbed elbows and had a meal with the cast of “The Bear.” He heard White and Cena compare notes on their workout routines and Ayo Edebiri (chef Sydney) lament she couldn’t do any open mics at comedy clubs because they were filming all day and rest and study their lines all night.

“We were talking about the comedy scene in Chicago, and I offered to give her a spot on my show, but she said, unfortunately I'm not going to be able to have enough time away, but maybe next time.”

He had a longer discussion with Matheson, the real-life chef who has several restaurants in Ontario, including Rizzo’s House of Parm in Fort Erie.

“We talked about Niagara Falls, we talked about the Friendship Festival, we talked about Toronto, we talked about food in Buffalo. He came on our side of the bridge a lot because he was into the music scene. He went to a lot of punk shows and stuff. A couple of local boys meeting up on the set of ‘The Bear.’ It was a lot of fun and great to talk with him.”

You could say Matheson passed the “authentically Buffalo test.”