Donnie Wahlberg recently shared the Blue Bloods cast’s secrets for surviving their marathon dinner-table shoots-scenes that often took eight hours to film.
“Everybody’s eating on Blue Bloods,” Wahlberg said. “Everyone had a trick. Bridget would just push her potatoes around with her fork. And everyone knows Tom would butter his roll for six hours.”
Although the weekly dinner scenes brought the whole cast together, Tom Selleck admitted back in 2013 that the endless eating was exhausting. “Filming an eating scene is miserable,” he told PEOPLE. “You have to eat the same foods over and over again. We’ll probably spend eight hours shooting this scene.”
Now, with the launch of the spinoff Boston Blue, those family-style moments will continue. Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Lena Silvers, says the new show honors the legacy of the Reagans while introducing another law-enforcement family, the Silvers. “They couldn’t be more different, but they’re also so similar… It’s crime, it’s doing the right thing, it’s sacrifice.”
The Boston Blue cast has already learned some eating-scene lessons the hard way. Martin-Green admitted to overeating brisket on set, and Marcus Scribner had his own overindulgent moment. “We all take turns being like, ‘Okay, I had too much,’” she said.
Despite the challenges, fans love these scenes for the warmth and authenticity they bring to the franchise. New episodes of Boston Blue air Fridays on CBS.
