Mike, Michael, Mikey, Jon Bernthal’s character is referred to in a lot of ways on The Bear, but he isn’t seen often. He kind of lives as a legend or a myth in the ensemble’s minds. So, having an A-lister like Bernthal come in to play Carmy’s older brother really did help hammer that idea home. It turns out that getting him onto the FX hit was in part thanks to Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays Richie on the Chicago-set dramedy. After working with The Walking Dead alum during Season 1 of The Punisher, he explained how he helped get his Marvel colleague onto the hit series, and why he was such a good fit.
Back in 2017, when Marvel still had shows on Netflix, Jon Bernthal played the titular character in The Punisher, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach played Frank Castle’s ally and hacker David Liberman, also known as Micro. After working closely together during Season 1, the actors went their separate ways. As Moss-Bachrach was working on The Bear he was asked if he knew of any actors who’d be a good fit to play Carmy’s older brother who died and appears in flashbacks. While he didn’t think we should see Mikey at first, he came to the conclusion that his Marvel co-star would be a good fit for the role telling CinemaBlend:
