Vanessa Ray stars as Eddie Janko-Reagan in Blue Bloods. The series finale premieres tonight at 10 PM ET/PT on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
“End of Tour” – It’s all hands on deck for the Reagan family, as they race to stop deadly mayhem in the city when the gangs of New York unite together to demand amnesty for the release of their imprisoned members and those awaiting trial.
I caught up with the actress over Zoom to discuss what fans can expect from Jamko, how life imitated art with Eddie’s current storyline, her final days of filming, and more. Keep reading for our last Blue Bloods conversation!
To start off, are you happy with the way the series ends?
Vanessa Ray: I would say, yes. I think that it really checks all the boxes of all the things that people love about the show. You get an epic family dinner, you get an epic storyline. My story is, you know, Kevin Wade came to us maybe episode eight of this season and said what was going to happen, and it was a real gut punch to me and the other person that is involved. At first, we were like, “Uh, I don’t know how we feel about this,” and then we read the script and it was so beautiful and so breathtaking. Knowing that everybody on board was like, “We are going to handle this with as much care as possible,” that was such… it was just such a special thing to get to do it in that way, we’re all just going to handle this so graciously, thoughtfully, and everything. So, I don’t know, I’m not happy that it’s ended, but on the other hand, I feel like we left no crumbs. We left nothing else, you know?
That’s the important part. Is there anything you can tease, maybe regarding Eddie and Jamie? You already know I’m such a big shipper of those two, I want their happy ending.
Well, I think if you were paying attention, which I think everybody always is, there have been some shifts in where they feel like their family can go. For such a long time, Eddie was just like, ‘I don’t think I can bring a child into this world, knowing the dangerous job that we both have,’ and even just the Reagan family, in the broader sense, so much heartache, so much devastating death and things have happened to their family. So for years, I don’t know that Eddie was like, ‘I’d really thought this through,’ but then when she married into the family, she was like, ‘I don’t think I could bring another Reagan into this family.’ And so, things started to really shift in this last season. We got to explore a lot of things and I don’t know if that’s art imitating life, I became a mother this year. I don’t know if it was any of that.
Thank you. I mean, he’s just… the cutest baby in the world and I’m so lucky that everybody on the show was so excited for him and so excited to meet him, offering to babysit and bringing clothes and toys. I mean, all the things and being able to bring him to set with me all the time. So, like I said, I don’t know if it’s art imitating life or if it was just truly the right time for Eddie’s storyline to move where she was just like, ‘No, actually, I think a lot of my hang-ups were a bit more about my own family,’ less about the Reagan family, more about her own family. And so, being able to kind of shed some of that stuff and get rid of some of that stuff has opened up a space for them to perhaps expand.
I said it last time with you and Will, I’ve been waiting for it. We’re all waiting. I love what you said about life imitating art, because I feel like that’s such a big theme, not only for actors, but I also see it when I watch shows myself. That’s why I love TV the way that I do and I imagine that was a really nice thing for you to portray. Can you tell me a little bit about approaching that kind of shift and seeing her grow in that way? It’s not that she has to have a baby, she does not have to become a mother but I think it’s really beautiful that she could come to that conclusion because she married someone she loves and she is in a family now that is so loving.
Yeah, exactly. She didn’t have to, there was no [pressure]. Of course, us as fans, were like, there’s pressure but within the story, there was never pressure, which is also such a very cool thing, because that’s very rare in a family, right? As we know, families are like, “I want a grandchild, you’ve been together this long,” all those things. They never put that on her and I think that it makes sense the natural progression of her giving her life to maybe right some wrongs in her family, like her father was definitely a criminal and so, her going into law enforcement was to sort of right that wrong and then it was like, that can only take her so far. Then, allowing herself to find love, love someone, and be loved by them, that was a huge healing part of it. The next part of it is then, she’s in this family where they can have conflict and they can also embrace one another. There’s never love lost,
