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“It lets me know that I’ve run a good race,” says Colón-Zayas, who’s been grinding away at acting since the 1990s. “And that all the struggle has been seen and acknowledged. That I have a gift. Because it’s been a lifetime of doubting it. To have the world say, ‘We see you,’ and I will dare to say, ‘Here are my peers.’ Carol Burnett raised me. Meryl Streep is a queen. Sheryl Lee Ralph too. Being in that company with those women is beyond.”
Colón-Zayas hasn’t had a chance to know or work with her category colleagues, other than meeting some of them in passing at awards ceremonies. She did recently appear on a SAG-AFTRA Foundation panel with fellow nominees Janelle James and Hannah Einbinder.
But there was one magical moment years ago when Streep came backstage at one of Colón-Zayas’ stage performances.
“She told me I hit it out of the park!” Colón-Zayas remembers. As for Burnett, “My natural instinct is ‘I’m not worthy.’ She’s the queen, right? Every Saturday night I’d watch her. It’s a lifetime of memories. And so I couldn’t ask for more.”
Colón-Zayas began her career Off Broadway with the semi-autobiographical solo show “Sistah Supreme,” then added steady work in film and TV. The Bronx native has now appeared on “Law & Order” three times as three different characters.
But Colón-Zayas faced plenty of stretches when the roles were few and she wasn’t sure if she could keep on acting.
“There were a lot of those moments,” she says. “But my whole lifetime has been about making it through the day, or making it through the month. I wish I could say that I was 100% past that, but I don’t think I ever will be.”
Such is the life of a working actor, particularly in New York. She’s popped up in everything from “Sex and the City” to “Blue Bloods,” but it wasn’t until 2019 that she got her first regular role, on OWN’s “David Makes Man.” That led to a part on the 2021 revival of HBO’s “In Treatment.” But the real breakthrough came with FX’s “The Bear.”
In Season 1, her character, Tina Marrero, is a sharp-tongued cook who’s suspicious of the changes that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) is bringing to their greasy spoon, The Beef. Carmy instructs the staff to address one another as “Chef,” which she mockingly changes to “Jeff.” But by Season 2 — for which Colón-Zayas is nominated for this cycle — Tina has embraced culinary school and adapted to Carmy’s big idea of turning their shop into a fine-dining establishment.
Meanwhile, Season 3 of “The Bear” gave Colón- Zayas even more to chew on, via a stand-alone episode that provided more backstory to how she arrived at The Beef. (As a bonus, real-life husband David Zayas played her TV spouse.)
“I’m getting so much love from people of all walks of life,” she says. But it has been especially gratifying for her success to mean so much to Latinas and people from the Bronx.
“For people who look like me, I cannot put into words what that means to me,” she says. “I get so emotional. I feel like it is a responsibility moving forward to bring as much humanity as I can into the roles and the communities. And I feel so moved and so proud that they can see themselves in me.”
