The Bear season 2 mouse scene vetoed by Disney

Disney wouldn't allow The Bear season 2 to shoot a scene with "a bunch of live rats and mice".

This insight emerged from Richie Jerimovich star Ebon Moss-Bachrach's recent interview with Collider, where he discussed the return of his acclaimed Chicago kitchen drama.

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In The Bear's sophomore season, which debuts in the UK on streaming service Disney+ next month, Richie and his co-workers (including chef Carmen Berzatto, played by Jeremy Allen White) are busy renovating the eatery when a ceiling suddenly collapses.

Moss-Bachrach revealed that this comedic sequence was shot twice on the day, with a 45-minute reset time, but he wanted to stir even more chaos into the pot.

"Originally, I pitched them something I thought would be really great. Loathe as I would have been to do it, but I thought it would be amazing, if just a bunch of live rats and mice fell down, and then ran away, and everyone freaked out," he said.

"I thought that would be incredible and shocking. I really didn't wanna do it, but I would have done it for the sake of the scene."

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Apparently, the show's writers "humoured" him by presenting this idea to the Disney hierarchy, who weren't at all interested.

"I don't know if they just lied and told me they did, but they said they ran it up at Disney, and somebody said, 'No, we can't use live animals.' I also think that, perhaps under the Disney banner of Mickey Mouse, they didn't wanna have any mice.

"But that also might have been a total lie," Moss-Bachrach conceded.

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