The world of Blue Bloods is expanding as Donnie Wahlberg reprises his role as NYPD officer Danny Reagan in Boston Blue (premiering Oct. 17 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CTV in Canada, CBS in the U.S.). As Danny’s son Sean (Mika Amonsen) begins his own career as a patrol cop with the Boston Police Department, an investigation leads Danny to take a job with Boston PD. But amid all the crimes and investigations, the Blue Bloods spinoff is really a story centred around two policing families.
“It does give Danny a chance to do two things he’s never done on Blue Bloods. … One is to be a fish out of water in a new city. Two is to be a dad to a cop,” Wahlberg told Yahoo Canada about what appealed to him about the show. “On Blue Bloods Danny’s been the son of a cop, the grandson of a cop, the brother of a cop, but never the father of a cop. And I knew that would create some opportunities.”
Sean’s partner on patrol is Jonah Silver (Marcus Scribner), they’re best friends who met at the police academy. Jonah’s sister Lena (Sonequa Martin-Green) is a detective, his other sister Sarah (Maggie Lawson) is the police superintendent and their mother, Mae (Gloria Reuben), is the district attorney.
“The chance to tell another law enforcement family story, I thought was great,” Wahlberg said. “Playing a Reagan for so many years, I got to know how many law enforcement families are out there, and how much that show meant to them, and how their stories could be told too.”
“I think having an opportunity to expand the Blue Bloods universe while maintaining the traditions, the faith, the family, … I think … it’s a wonderful recipe. Now doing it and saying it are two different things, but we worked really hard to do it.”
Additionally, this move for Danny allows the show to have more fun with the character than we’ve seen before.
“The new world that he’s in presents new challenges, but it also relieves some tensions and stresses for him as well, and lets him sort of evolve and change and grow,” Wahlberg said.
‘There was a lot of courage taken to tell this story’
The Silver family is a great pairing for the Reagans, with Boston Blue really allocating time to understanding this family unit, a mixed-race Jewish family, where the patriarch, Rev. Edwin Peters (Ernie Hudson), is Baptist.
That’s particularly evident in these great dinner scenes, which were some of the most beloved moments in Blue Bloods, and in Boston Blue that’s carried over with more of a focus on its characters learning and coming together with both the Silvers and Reagans.
“I felt that there was a lot of courage taken to tell this story the way it’s told,” Sonequa Martin-Green highlighted. “Brandon Sonnier wanted to see his family on screen. He’s Black, his family practices Judaism. He’s never seen that before, and he wanted to showcase that.”
“[The Silvers] are a multi-racial, multi-faith family, and that astounded me to see that. … Seeing faiths coming together in one family, specifically seeing Christianity and Judaism coming together, really touched me.”
While Psych fans will certainly be excited to see Maggie Lawson back in a police department, after playing detective Juliet O’Hara on that series, the relationship between Maggie and Lena is particularly interesting in Boston Blue. Specifically because, as Mae states on the show, she raised her daughters to be “warriors.”
“I absolutely love Maggie. … We definitely wanted to make sure that there were threads that we shared, because we were both raised to be warriors,” Martin-Green said. “We had this common denominator in the way that we were raised with our mom and with our dad. And I am sharing my mother, and she was sharing her father.”
“And so we talk about it sometimes, how there is this beautiful synergy of femininity and strength, of ferocity and elegance, and that’s something that we learned from our mother. And we want to make sure we find all the different ways that we can put that in the story.”
‘Only thing Bostonians dislike more than pretending it’s Boston is…overdoing it’
While Boston is Wahlberg’s hometown, some of Boston Blue was filmed in the city, but much of the show was actually filmed in Toronto. So not only did the Canadian location have to stand in for quite a unique city, it also had to be convincing enough to get Wahlberg’s seal of approval.
“Boston was the big hook. … And then I was like, OK but we’re not going film there? … Being from the city, I know it’s incredibly difficult to replicate the city. But I’ve also worked [in Toronto] plenty of times, and know that this is a great place to work and a great place to be,” Wahlberg said. “My concern really was only in how we could make it look authentic. But now there’s a catch to that. … Because the only thing Bostonians dislike more than pretending it’s Boston is trying too hard and overdoing it. Like if you overdo the accents, it’s worse than not even trying to do the accent. … We take all these things into consideration.”
“Filming in Boston was a joy. It was very stressful, just in terms of meeting obligations and people, human beings on the streets and taking pictures and stuff. But it was so much fun. And I think it was just as much fun for the rest of the cast, because they got to get a sense of what we were doing and who we were representing, and who we were portraying, and the history of the city. I got to take Marcus and Mika out for like two nights with my nephews and show them around the city. And they got to really experience it.”
But Wahlberg also stressed that the Toronto crew “deserves a lot of credit” for capturing Boston as well as they did for Boston Blue, while the characters still remain the core focus.
“There are seamless moments in the show where I’m running down the street in Toronto, and in one flash I’m running down the street in Boston,” Wahlberg said.
“But the characters are where the story is going to live. … If we get too caught up in trying to tell about a place instead, … we would do a disservice. … We have to love and care about these characters above all else, and that’s the center of my focus.”
