Liza Colón-Zayas’s Medallion

Liza Colón-Zayas used to ride her bike between the living room and kitchen of her grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx. Her Puerto Rican grandmother didn’t speak English, and Ms. Colón-Zayas, a Bronx-native Nuyorican, didn’t speak Spanish. But the two found other ways to communicate: through her grandmother’s patience as she rode her two-wheeler around the tight space; through hand gestures and homemade Puerto Rican food.

“As I look back, it breaks my heart that we couldn’t have conversations,” Ms. Colón-Zayas said. She’s now the guardian of her grandmother’s ornate Catholic medallion, a talisman given to her grandmother by Ms. Colón-Zayas’s grandfather when her grandparents moved back to Puerto Rico.

The medallion is kept safe in a drawer. Ms. Colón-Zayas last wore it when she made the Puerto Rican dish arroz con gandulesfor a cooking segment of “The Bear.” “I wore it for her,” she said.

In an interview, the actress, who was nominated for an Emmy for her role in “The Bear,” took out the medallion once again. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Tell me about this piece of jewelry.

This was my grandmother’s medallion. She was born in 1904, she came to this country in 1948. And then my grandparents moved back to Puerto Rico in the 1970s. And when they moved back, [my grandfather] got her this beautiful medallion. She was very Catholic. Then she handed it down to my mom, and then my mom gave it to me. She handed it to me when she moved out of her apartment in the Bronx, upstate. That was about 10 years ago.

When you wore the medallion during the cooking segment you filmed, did it give you confidence or comfort? Was it symbolic?