Ayo Edebiri has recalled the baffling moment her father refused to let Martin Scorsese and his film crew shoot the 2005 film The Departed in their house.
Long before Edebiri became the star of the hit TV series The Bear, she had her first glimpse at Hollywood movie-making when the production team for The Departed knocked on the door of her family’s Boston home and offered money in return for shooting a scene of the film there.
The actor, now 28, was 10 years old at the time, and recalled being stunned by her father’s reaction when he didn’t jump at the chance to brush shoulders with Hollywood royalty.
Edebiri recounted her father’s scepticism at the too-good-to-be-true offer during a recent instalment of Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Putting on her father’s voice, Edebiri comically recreated his reaction: “Use my house. So you can get the deed to my house? You see a working immigrant man with a house. And you want to steal the house. You want to come inside the house? Take my keys? Take the deed? And take my family? Nice try.”
The production crew insisted that wasn’t the case and tried to reassure him that they would only use the house for a short time and that he would be compensated for it.
“You pay me money, so in court you can say you paid for my house?” Edebiri jokingly recalled her father saying.
The location scouts then told him that the film’s director Scorsese and star DiCaprio would arrive in 30 minutes to shoot the scene, Edebiri said, but her father wasn’t convinced.
“Yeah, and we’ll have a Black president,” her father quipped, according to the actor.
In the end, the location scouts found another suitable house in the neighbourhood.
The Departed went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, with Scorsese winning Best Director.
Ebebiri is best known for playing sous-chef Sydney Adamu in the chaotic comedy-drama The Bear, which documents the lives of the employees of a Chicago sandwich shop. Ebebiri has won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the series.
More recently, she starred in the 2023 comedy film Bottoms and voiced the character Envy in the children’s animation Inside Out 2.
The third season of The Bear will arrive on 27 June, and in the trailer, Edebiri’s Sydney is heard lamenting: “This is a dysfunctional kitchen!”
Read more about The Bear’s forthcoming third season here.
