Edwin Lee Gibson ’12: Finding Fame on “The Bear”

When Edwin Lee Gibson ’12 was cast as Ebraheim in “The Bear,” he was given a one-line description of his character: “A mystery who’s lived 1,000 lives.”

“That’s all Christopher Storer said about him,” Gibson says, quoting the show’s creator. “But that was all I needed. It gave me a lot of space to play.”

These days, viewers know Ebraheim as the stoic East African war veteran who runs the takeout sandwich window. He is a long-time employee of “The Bear,” a Chicago restaurant undergoing a transformation. “With as few lines as Ebra has, I wanted to be able to weight those lines and give people a sense of intrigue about him,” he says. “My goal is for people to see this mystery and really wonder who he is.”

One thing that’s not a mystery? The incredible success of the show, which has become a global phenomenon. It recently garnered 23 Emmy nominations, including ‘Best Comedy Series.’  The show was also named Television Program of the Year for two years by the American Film Institute, and received accolades from the Golden Globes Awards, the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, the Peabody Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards, among others.

Gibson, who has appeared in 104 theater productions, credits the show’s success to its talented cast as well as the realistic way it portrays the challenges of running a restaurant in a city like Chicago. He says viewers also appreciate the way the show deals with trauma in men’s lives.

For the cast, the show’s global popularity was a surprise. “If you ask any of us, we didn’t have huge expectations,” Gibson says. “I think that’s why it works so well because we were just making the show. The response has been so wonderful, so amazing. We love bringing it to everyone because of the response.”

Discovering Acting

Gibson grew up in Houston, Texas, the younger of two boys, whose cousin also lived with them for a while. As a child, he stuttered. Rather than feeling ashamed, he became fascinated with speech patterns.

“I’m one of those stutterers who ran toward language and not away from it,” he said. “I always thought if I had dysfunction of speech pattern, then wow, all these people have a speech pattern. I’ve always been in this dance with language as a stutterer.”

Gibson discovered his love of acting at 16, when he landed his first paid acting gig playing the Tin Man in a summer production of “The Wiz.” His fascination with speech patterns soon became the basis for his acting method.

Gibson’s mother, a social worker trained in classical voice, discouraged him from acting, afraid he would struggle. But his father, a garbageman who fixed cars on the side, encouraged him. “He told me, ‘I don’t know anything about that acting, but it’s your life, do what you want to do,’” Gibson said.

When he won the 2006 OBIE (off-Broadway theater) award for outstanding performance in “The Seven,” his mother went to New York City to see the show. Later, after dinner, she told him, “I’m so glad you didn’t listen to me. I was wrong.”

Sadly, his father never saw his son perform and died six months before Gibson’s first national TV commercial aired, a pitch for Levi’s 501 jeans. “He’d always say I’ll come to the next one, but he never did,” Gibson said. “It just wasn’t his thing. But he was totally supportive.”

Today, in honor of his father, he always wears navy blue pants on the set of “The Bear.” Even his watch — both the band and the face — is the same shade of blue.

“They were the same color of blue he wore to go to work as a garbage man,” Gibson said. “I always tell people ‘I don’t do what my dad did for a living but I do what I do the way he did what he did.’ He was a hard worker. So that’s how I attack my work. Those pants are always a reminder. It’s not my favorite color but it’s my favorite memory of him.”

Life on the Stage

Gibson’s strong work ethic enabled him to become an actor without taking a single acting class. “I learned (acting) in the theater from some really fine artists and kept the curiosity of a 6-year-old,” Gibson says.

Instead, he got his B.A. in 2012 from Empire State University in the arts and social theory, while acting. He credits his mentor, Christiane Warren, with helping him navigate his way to a degree. “The flexibility that SUNY Empire allows people at whatever juncture they’re at in their life is really wonderful,” he says. In 2016, he got an MFA in screen writing from Point Park University in Pittsburgh. 

As an actor, Gibson has had a nomadic life, living in New York City, Pittsburgh, Ithaca, NY, and now Los Angeles, while performing on stages across the country and in the U.K. and Paris. More recently, he starred in the play “Fetch Clay, Make Man,” which won him the best lead performance award from he LA Drama Critics’ Circle for his portrayal of the black actor Stepin' Fetchit.

Gibson has also appeared in films such as “Marshall,” “Mom and Dad,” and “The Visitor.” His TV appearances include recurring roles on “Fargo” and “UnPrisoned,” as well as “Shameless,” “Law and Order: SVU,” and “Chicago P.D.”

Everywhere he lived, he taught theater and writing to youths. He ran the Musical Theater Workshop at the Rye Arts Center in Westchester County and taught creative writing and acting to at-risk LGBTQI youths in Pittsburgh. In New York City, he led workshops on creative writing at Riker’s Island. “Whether I’m working with kids in Pittsburgh or inmates in Rikers, I want them to know that no matter where you are, your voice is important,” he says.

It was a lesson he learned early on from his father, that what he had to say mattered, despite his stutter. “I’ve never had an issue with my stutter,” he said. “It’s actually my superpower because I recognize the way language works in a way that people who don’t stutter don’t. Understanding that helps me understand characters, that there’s a rhythm to how we speak and that everyone speaks in a certain pattern.”

Those same skills are at work in his next project. In December, Gibson will star in and direct “a pink and red dress made of satin…covered in flowers, mostly roses,” which he also wrote, as an homage to his mom. The story is set in a sleepy border town and centers around a young woman who’s a lounge singer and facing the uncertainty of love. She has a dress that holds the secret to her family’s past.

“My brother who passed away about a year and a half ago, always thought I’d be a writer, but I didn’t see how that could manifest into a livelihood,” he said. “I could see myself making a living as an actor more than I could a writer, which might be odd to some people. Now I’ve come around, and I do both.”