Liza Colón-Zayas may have just won her first Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Tina in FX‘s streaming series The Bear, but the star has been gracing TV screens for years in roles across shows like Law & Order: SVU, David Makes Man, In Treatment, New York Undercover, and Third Watch to name a few.
When TV Insider caught up with the star for The Bear‘s Season 3 launch, she walked down memory lane, offering some insight and behind-the-scenes details about the roles that led to her success as Tina in the acclaimed kitchen drama. Among one of the first in this list of memories is SVU, in which she’s appeared three times.
FX
In the first episode, she recalls playing a maid who stumbles across a crime scene. “I prepared for that by looking at the most gruesome, awful things the interwebs has to offer so I could have those images in my brain,” Colón-Zayas says of her first role on the crime hit. She also had a two-episode run as Dolores Rodriguez, a woman whose son has “been missing for 10 years and she has never moved or changed anything.”
“That was a rough one,” Colón-Zayas admits, “But Mariska Hargitay is my hero.”
As Colón-Zayas continues to reflect on roles in the video above, she delves into the stories behind her casting in New York Undercover, where she remembers, “Dick Wolf was there, and during my audition, there was a mouse running back and forth during the scene, and somehow we just rolled with it.”
When it comes to her casting in The Bear, Colón-Zayas admits she was surprised she landed the now Emmy-winning role. “It really was a shocker because I was cast off a self-tape,” she says. “[I] didn’t know the script. I didn’t get the script. So I just got these two scenes. And it’s that thing that you never know who’s watching.”
According to Colón-Zayas, the role was supposedly originally written for a man, but people behind the scenes fought to cast her in the part. Still, she wasn’t sure if many people would tune in when it first debuted, but “they did, and it’s just like wildfire,” Colón-Zayas exclaims.
See her full career rewind above, and don’t miss her award-winning performance in The Bear.
FX’s The Bear, Streaming now, Hulu