The final episodes of Blue Bloods are airing now on the 2024 TV schedule, and fans are preparing themselves for the final Reagan family dinners. The meals are a staple of the long-running CBS procedural, and it’s always an entertaining aspect of each episode as they can involve arguments, closure, or even someone new joining the family. However, filming the food-focused scenes can be tough, as Vanessa Ray explained while also revealing what she’s learned about them from her on-screen sister-in-law, Bridget Moynahan.
Ray joined Blue Bloods in Season 4 as Jamie’s new partner, but she didn’t start coming around to the famous family dinners until the end of Season 8 after Eddie and Jamie got engaged. While she had already been on the show for four seasons at that point, being part of the Reagan’s dinners wasn’t so easy at first.
Via Entertainment Weekly, Ray revealed during a PaleyFest panel that she was excited to do the scenes. However, she quickly learned how hard it is to film for a long time with food while revealing the sage advice Bridget Moynahan gave her:
The first several times I was at the dinner table, I did eat the rolls. I didn’t just butter the rolls. And I think Bridget, at one point, was like, ‘You sure you want to do that?’ I’m like, ‘Why? What?’ [And she said,] ‘Well, it’s your funeral, girl.’ And I kept eating, and I realized, ‘Oh, you can’t eat 17 rolls.’
It sounds like Moynahan had everything figured out and was merely just trying to warn Ray, who didn’t really take her advice at first. However, eventually, she did, which proved to work in her favor.
It turns out, the Erin actress has more than one trick up her sleeve too when it comes to filming these scenes, as Tom Selleck explained:
The truth can be told because the eight episodes [of the final season] are done. We all have tricks. Bridget [Moynahan] is a food masher. She keeps her hand real active and combines her potatoes and everything. I butter rolls. I know everybody else has some tricks they might confess before it’s too late.
It is fun to hear behind-the-scenes details of the Reagan family dinners since they are so iconic.
Selleck previously credited the family dinners as a reason for Blue Bloods lasting so long, because it’s something that fans always look forward to, it’s a great way to have everyone in a scene together, and it makes that family dynamic all the more believable.
Speaking of believable, being reminded that some of the cast actually eats during the family dinners makes all this even better. Donnie Wahlberg managed to do this pretty well, in fact, and he explained how, saying:
There’s a silly part of the eating and a real part of the eating, and the silly part is if I was going on tour the following summer, I ate only vegetables. If I wasn’t, I ate whatever. And I did get high a few times off the whipped cream in the desserts. I got these sugar highs. But, in truth, I wanted to eat as the character because I thought it was as far as I could go to talking with my mouth full in that first dinner scene.
Everyone has their own tips for getting through these scenes after 14 seasons of Blue Bloods, and it’s clear that there are some masters of the family dinners. Now that Vanessa Ray has been doing them for six seasons, she probably has some of her own tips as well.
While learning about how these iconic scenes is certainly fun, these final Reagan family dinners are going to be hard to watch. However, at least fans can tune in for the final episodes as they air on CBS every Friday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS and stream the entire series with a Paramount+ subscription.
