The Bear Season 2: Who Plays Claire?

Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) might seem like he's only committed to opening his new restaurant on FX and Hulu's "The Bear," but a character popping up from his past could ultimately serve as a distraction. That character — Claire, a former flame — is played by Molly Gordon, Carmy's love interest during Season 2 of the wildly popular, critically acclaimed restaurant drama.

Claire first shows up in the season's second episode, randomly running into Carmy at a convenience store and wryly surprised that he remembers her name. The two catch up and Claire is genuinely thrilled to hear that Carmy is opening his own restaurant, even remembering that he wanted to call it The Bear. They're both working towards long-held dreams, as it turns out; Claire is finishing up her residency as a trauma physician, and she asks for Carmy's number, hoping they can meet up. (He gives her a fake number, and the drama only heightens from there.)

So who plays Claire? That would be Molly Gordon, a fresh face who's been showing up a lot lately. Here's where you've probably seen Gordon before she showed up on "The Bear."

Gordon has been acting since she was just a small child, appearing in 2001's "I Am Sam" in her feature film debut at just four years old. After that, she took a break for a decade or so and came back with a vengeance, showing up in 2015's "Love the Coopers" and starring alongside Melissa McCarthy as the Oscar nominee's daughter in the 2018 comedy "Life of the Party." Her biggest role to date, though, is probably in Olivia Wilde's 2019 directorial debut "Booksmart," where Gordon played Annabelle, a high school classmate of Beanie Feldstein's Molly who starts out as an enemy and eventually becomes a friend. After "Booksmart," Gordon also appeared in "Good Boys" that same year and "Shiva Baby" in 2020.

On the small screen, Gordon played a main role for three seasons of "Animal Kingdom" as a high school student allied with the crime family the Codys. She also appeared in two episodes of the Hulu original "Ramy." (Incidentally, Ramy Youssef, that show's creator and star, directed the fourth episode of Season 2 of "The Bear.") 

"The Bear" isn't Gordon's only major project this year, though; her directorial debut with Nick Lieberman, "Theater Camp," which she devised alongside Ben Platt ("Dear Evan Hansen") and Noah Galvin ("The Good Doctor"), shines a satirical light on intensive performance summer camps. Gordon's work will be everywhere this summer, and that includes one of Hulu's biggest original shows.