A Winning Recipe: Josh Senior ’08, Executive Producer of "The Bear"

Josh Senior ’08 has won and been nominated for a lot of awards in his career. Now he can add Golden Globe and Emmy winner to the list. Senior, head of production at American Light & Fixture, is executive producer of the FX-produced Hulu series The Bear, a dramedy about the inner workings of the restaurant industry that took home three Golden Globes on January 7 for best television series and best performance by both male and female actors in a musical or comedy.

It was a big weekend for Senior and the show. The Bear also won awards for casting, editing, sound editing, and mixing at the creative arts Emmys held on January 6. Senior is also founder of Senior Post, a post-production facility that makes The Bear. At the Primetime Emmy awards ceremony on January 15, Senior and the show will be vying for nine more awards, including outstanding comedy series.

Senior talks about how he got where he is and how his Lehigh education helped.

How does it feel for the show to have won all those awards?
I find it challenging to not be distracted by awards, but at the end of the day, they are the result of many, many people’s good work. To win is a celebration of the vast team of people who come together to make something. Filmmaking is a team sport, and to see the team be recognized is a wonderful thing. Winning is always a great surprise.

What is your role as executive producer for a TV show?
It differs from project to project, but on The Bear, I’m effectively the COO. I’m on set in Chicago every day we’re filming. I’m the main point of contact between the show and the network. I work with the other producers, the creator of the show, and the director to actualize the vision of what the show is supposed to be. And because I also own the post-production house, I have to go make that happen. I’m a unique executive producer because I can control the full means of production, from the writing process, to production, to post-production and delivery.

What is the process to get The Bear to TV?
There are five of us who are the core creative nucleus of everything we do. In The Bear, you see our affinity for a specific editing style, the tension and tone. You see Chris Storer’s incredible writing and directing. There’s the music that we’ve all chosen together for the show. We have a soundstage in Chicago where we’ve recreated a restaurant, and we film the show in three months. The whole thing from start to finish is a little over six months — the fastest turnaround time I’ve heard of for any show on TV.

What do you think makes The Bear such a popular show?
It’s very difficult to engineer something for an audience. I think the intention when you’re making art is to make the most authentic things you can, and the fact that people like the show is a delightful surprise. When we made the first season, we were thinking it would be great if kids in their freshman year of college thought it was cool. It’s about dissonance and tension, and the theme of the first season is grief. I don’t think that’s a recipe for a hit — I guess it’s just that we did a pretty good job executing.

How did you go from a degree in international relations to the entertainment industry?
Lehigh helped me learn and to have a work ethic that has served me my whole career. I was always comfortable with computers and worked in the IMRC (International Multimedia Resource Center) and the digital media studio at Lehigh. After graduation, I did some video editing and talked my way into Nike’s headquarters in New York City, offering to edit a video for free to show them that I knew what I was doing. I started getting paid for that work, then later started my post-production house, Senior Post.

I realized I had more acumen for business and entrepreneurship than I did for physically editing video. That’s where my Lehigh education came in handy. Being able to talk to people and understand what they were hoping to do and then make it happen became my calling card at Senior Post. I did post [production] on some comedy specials, which led me to a great deal of introductions at places like HBO and A24. That’s where I met Chris Storer, and the rest is history.

What advice would you give students who want to follow in your footsteps?
Build a network while you’re in school — seek out people who do things you want to do. But don’t be too rigid about the path you have to take to get where you want to go. If you’d asked me when I graduated what I wanted to do, I would’ve said I wanted to be in foreign service. It took me a while to let the world happen to me in order to see what was out there and what I could do. Being self-confident and driven are the differentiators that have allowed me to excel, and those are things you can learn at Lehigh. Get out there and start making things. There are a thousand terrible things I’ve made that have never seen the light of day that prepared and equipped me to be ready to make things now.