Bad news, chefs. If you were rooting for a romantic storyline between Carmy and Sydney on The Bear, it’s not happening. No matter how many fancams you’ve saved (or edited) or that footage you thought you saw of Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri at a baseball game. The relationship between our two chefs is strictly platonic, the actors say.

Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, who play the leading pair, addressed rumors—and perhaps crushed dreams—while speaking at a press conference on Monday. When asked whether there’s a potential romance between Carmy and Sydney on the show, they both firmly responded, “No.”

“There was no talk in the rooms about any romantic implications [between Carmy and Sydney],” White clarified, according to Vanity Fair.

Edebiri also addressed how Carmy and Sydney’s business partnership in season 3 affects their personal relationship.: “Carmy is somebody that I think she’s really looked up to, but now is sort of in the thick of doing business with, and it’s, I think, a lot more chaotic than she might have idealized before they really started working together.”

the bear
Chuck Hodes/FX
White and Edebiri as Carmy and Sydney in The Bear.

The team has been fighting the SydCarmy ship since before season 2. “I know there are people who are very invested in that, and I understand and I appreciate it, but it was not that for me,” Edebiri told Variety in an interview published in January 2023. White added, “No! It was never discussed by anybody.” Meanwhile, co-showrunner Joanna Calo said the prospect “never came up.”

The Bear creator Chris Storer explained what they really had in mind for Carmy and Sydney’s relationship.

“We wanted to make something that was about friendship and a partnership,” he told Variety at the time. “It really is so funny that that is one of the things that people took away—of all the heavy shit that’s going on in the show! It was interesting because Ayo and Jeremy, since they are our friends and are such wonderful people, I think there is this charisma that comes off both of them.”

He added, “From the beginning, it was like, we should just show people being really good at their jobs and pushing each other. Selfishly, I hadn’t seen a show without a romantic plot and was like, that could be kind of cool and interesting.”

the bear season 3 premiere red carpet
Michael Buckner//Getty Images
White and Edebiri at the season 3 premiere of The Bear in Los Angeles on June 25.

Naturally, the actors, who boast such great chemistry onscreen, have also led fans to speculate whether they’re dating in real life, too. The pair hasn’t publicly addressed these rumors (though, it seems the press hasn’t asked about them outright), but they have discussed what their IRL relationship is really like.

“We really enjoy each other in life, on camera and off camera. I have a tremendous amount of respect for her as a person, but also as an artist. And so I hope that kind of thing shines through on camera between Carm and Syd,” White said of his co-star in her Vanity Fair profile.

“Work can be a very intimate thing and a very personal thing and a very emotional thing, and I think when you’re also in industries that are creative or creative adjacent, I think there’s something that also invokes feelings of passion,” Edebiri said in that interview, before adding of White: “Also, boy’s got some beautiful blue eyes. You know what I mean? Those are eyes you want to project onto.”

But maybe we shouldn’t read too deeply into that last comment. (It’s an objective observation, and who could disagree?!) Remember how Edebiri responded to White’s steamy Calvin Klein campaign earlier this year? While the rest of the internet was swooning over the shoot, she visibly jumped when the photo was shown to her on the Golden Globes red carpet. “I just—I’m happy for him. That’s my boy, you know what I mean?” she said. “I do feel like I want people to understand he’s my coworker...”

You can catch up with the very-good-friends-and-totally-not-in-love-coworkers when The Bear season 3 premieres tonight on Hulu.