In 1993, David Boreanaz landed a guest spot on an episode of the Fox sitcom “Married… With Children,” in which he played Christina Applegate’s unfaithful biker boyfriend. While that role didn’t evolve into his getting more episodes, Boreanaz, who began his career primarily as a background player, got his first real taste of working on-camera — and that adrenaline rush was enough to keep him pounding the pavement as a struggling actor in Los Angeles.
A few years later, Boreanaz was walking his dog when he was scouted by a manager who got him into an audition for vampire P.I. Angel on The WB supernatural drama “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” With the show already in production, the producers were desperately looking for a charisma, sardonic leading man to go up against Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy Summers.
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“I owe a lot to Sarah for her patience, and obviously the draw of our chemistry was a big part of that show’s success in the beginning. It was very ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” Boreanaz tells Variety of the sustained success of “Buffy,” which resulted in his own eponymous spinoff, “Angel.” “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t thank that I was able to walk my dog, which allowed me to get my manager, which propelled me to a meeting that really was a pathway and a start of something.”
For the better part of the last three decades, Boreanaz has become a staple on TV. After “Buffy” and “Angel,” which arguably spawned a generation of vampire shows, he played FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth opposite Emily Deschanel’s forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan, for 12 seasons on “Bones,” which is still Fox’s longest-running hour-long drama series. He then followed that up with a starring and executive producing role in the gritty military drama “SEAL Team,” which on Oct. 6 wrapped up its impressive seven-season run on Paramount+ (after first premiering on CBS).
While taking a break from visiting the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. — which is part of his ambassadorial work with the United States Organizations — Boreanaz discusses the end of “SEAL Team,” the key to his longevity in Hollywood — and why he would easily “consider” reprising his role in a “Bones” revival.
I always go back to the fact that the authenticity of the show lies within the characters’ drive to make the story move. Especially for “SEAL Team,” it was pivotal for us to be able to find that balance between the missions, the alterations and complications of those missions—but most importantly, the balance back home and what that means. He was so imbalanced for so many seasons; some seasons, he was thinking that he did have a grasp on it. This season, in particular, he was feeling as though he could find happiness, and slowly, the traumas and the nightmares were making it more evident that he was just causing more problems and issues, and feeling guilty about that.
So he actually goes back to Afghanistan and visits the family of his first kill, I guess, does alleviate some of that pain, but also opens up a place for him to understand that this is not a pattern for him anymore. Ultimately, for me, it was about finding the spiral moment for the character. Jason has been chasing his tail for seven seasons, and it felt right for him to find the spiral event that could take him in and take him out in an effective, healthier way than the way he was already doing it. I think it was a beautiful touch to put that on the character.
Was there ever any doubt in your mind that Jason would survive the final season? Did you or the rest of the producers ever toy with the idea of killing him off?
We played with the idea in one season where he is taking more of a command in the HAVOC [control] room and trying to feel something that would feel like. Personally, for me to put the character in that situation, I didn’t feel that it made sense. I think it would be more awkward and a little more fish out of water. I mean, Master Chief wouldn’t really be a fish out of water, but for that situation it’d be boring. The real essence of the guy is, he would somewhat break the rules. In the open sequence of the pilot, he’d go to the other room, get the files, jump off and almost be killed. He always put himself in that situation and made a narrowing escape. That’s who he is, and I’m glad that we stuck with that.
As far as discussing if he would actually be killed, it crossed my mind at the end of Season 4, where I was just like, “Maybe we should just kill him off, and end it.” Because it made sense to not complete that other traumatic event that these guys suffered from, I think I would be doing the role of an injustice [if we had killed him]. Going into the season, before the writers strike, I had proclaimed that this would be it for me. It wasn’t something that was thrown upon us. For me, it was pretty well-known, and because of this storyline and examining that third kind of trauma [after post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury], I knew I was doing the character justice.
What do you hope the legacy of “SEAL Team” will be, as far as the way it has attempted to advance conversations around mental health for military families?
Obviously, the mental health sector is something that I am extremely involved in — and getting even more involved into — as far as finding the help that people need, whether they’re suffering from anxiety or depression. How do you deal with certain remedies for that? How do you understand the pharmaceutical companies’ urge to push certain prescriptions on people just for financial gain? What’s going on with the FDA? What’s going on with our food? How does it affect mental health progress?
There’s so many avenues and lights that you can shine a light upon, and I just look forward to getting into more stories about those issues because mental health surrounds all these characters. I see it now even in Annapolis with these young students and these plebes and what they have to deal with for a whole year. You look at the horrific suicide rate on a base like Quantico, and that’s something that they deal with on a daily basis. So I think that shining a light on that will help the next person.
I know our show has done that, because I get responses from people reaching out saying, “Thank you for your show. I was going to kill myself. I watched it in a moment that helped me call out for help, and you saved my life.” That, in itself, is the biggest award I can get for a show like this. I’m so happy and pleased that we hit that mark, and the show will live on like that. It’s a very underrated show, I feel. It’s a show that was displaced on a network, that moved over to Paramount+, [which] gave us the freedom to show even more. But it’s definitely a type of show that has its end.
It ranges. Obviously, the cult shows [“Buffy” and “Angel”], I was blessed to be able to work with such fabulous writers and shoot shows that were very technically challenging at that time with greenscreen and wire work. It was a breakout role that would define the next step for me, in the learning of the acting process.
“Bones” was so experimental. People come up and say, “I became an anthropologist because of your show.” I know that our show defined procedurals in a different way when we were in our fourth or fifth season, because we kept pushing the character work and you could slowly see those other shows become more character-driven and not so plot heavy. So, we prided ourselves in being consistent with that work and taking that leap of faith, knowing that, at first, the networks were going to be like, “Oh, you can’t do that! Booth can’t wear Converse sneakers. Why are you wearing socks that are crazy? What are you doing with pens that undress themselves?” It’s very easy to say, “Oh, I’ll stop. I’ll stay in line.” As an artist, you have to stretch and take a chance. I was consistent with that — and then they embraced it. They were doing marketing campaigns with my shoes off and colorful socks!
Being embraced by this wonderful “SEAL Team” community, I’ve had people come up and say, “Thank you.” I was walking the hallways of the Pentagon on Tuesday, and it was fascinating to watch them turn and say, “Oh, Master Chief Hayes! Master Hayes! I love that show for what it is and how authentic it can be.” That’s the biggest compliment I could have received in the Pentagon — that we stuck to our guns, we found the balance, we showed the pain, we had the verbiage, we had the outfits correct. So people see me for a lot of characters. Oh, [I’ve even been recognized for] “Family Guy”! I get a lot of crazy ones, man.
Being able to go to your co-star and be like, “Hey, I’m going to be working on the weekends with my acting teacher [Ivana Chubbuck], who I think is the best and can offer some connection for the two of us,” is the start. That was the inception. I think that it would’ve been a little bit more challenging for me to do it singularly, and then to try to explain all that stuff to the opposing co-star, as well as to the showrunner and to the writers. Then it just becomes a different type of project, right? And that’s tough. So I’m grateful for her grace to accept it and then stick with it for so many years. Out of the 12 or 13 years that we did, it was nine or 10 years solid [where] every weekend, we were rewriting dialogue, doing exercises, finding the space.
Knowing that we’d done the work and we could throw it away — and then you could do that character, and it comes out instinctually — was the tipping point for that show. It really bonded us, and as much pushback as we may have gotten from the network at certain times, we continued to do it. Ivana comes up with an amazing toolbox of ideas that is so personable to oneself and the development of the character that you put the two of them in the same room together, and then it starts to become really great. You don’t have that if you don’t have Ivana; you don’t have that if Emily doesn’t say yes. So that was a big blessing to get that, and that’s not easy to get.
I miss her sunshine, her smile, her will to stretch the boundaries of a scene. I remember showing up one day on set early on, and I was upset about something. We kind of went at each other in a way that was healthy, but at the same time, we were like, “All right, we’re not always going to have great days. We’re going to agree to disagree. We’re going to stick to the work.” And I’m going to be able to say, “You know what, Emily? I’m having a bad day. Don’t take it personally.” And Emily would say, “David, I’m having a bad day. Don’t take it personally. I love you. Let’s go on.” From that moment on, it was glorious. What’s great about her is that she’s so willing to do the work, and be there for you. That’s what I miss so much about her. I don’t think I ever got mad at Emily. That’s just an energy thing, and I miss her so much. I speak very fondly of her, and we still talk.
There have been conversations about stepping back [into those roles] and doing a sequence of the show somewhere — which is an easy show to recreate. It’s not rocket science, right? It’s something that you can just jump in and out of, which would be fun to do. Being in Quantico and at the actual FBI recently, I was like, “I’m home! Booth is home!” What you could do and start from there alone would be great. I was walking Quantico and the FBI, and I was like, ”Imagine doing this great walk-and-talk here and having to find a body where the FBI is. That’d be hilarious!” So you never know …
