Will Hochman’s final day on set of season 14 of Blue Bloods left him feeling a sense of “gratitude”
“It was a hot, sunny, June day. I remember sweating a lot and feeling a wonderful combination of joy, presence and gratitude,” he told TV Insider in an interview published on Monday, November 18. “Everyone was there. Everyone. Hands were held. Jokes were made. Tissues were offered. It was the best.”
He was asked about what it was like to film the show’s final Reagan family dinner.
“I joined the show a few weeks before the COVID pandemic began. Now, here we are four years later and one of the few things that remained in the midst of navigating that time was getting to gather around the Reagan table and bring family dinner to life,” he said. “I will miss it.”
“The final family dinner had an extraordinary feel to it, maybe even a kind of sacred feeling,” Will continued. “After 14 years, this was the last one. This was it. I did my best to be as present as possible and to take it all in, to look people right in the eye and to be there together.”
Will joined the show’s cast as Joe Hill, the son of Joe Reagan and Paula Hill, in season 10 in 2019. His character has definitely gone through great periods of development throughout each of the seasons, and the way he interacts with the Reagans has certainly peaked the interest of viewers.
He wasn’t the only cast member to shed some light on filming the final Blue Bloods family dinner and the mood on set.
“Listen, there was a lot of celebration. There was a lot of joy and laughter and just a sense of accomplishment for sure,” Vanessa Ray, who portrays Eddie Janko-Reagan on the show, told TV Insider in an interview published on October 18. “But it was absolutely heart wrenching to wrap that final family dinner. And we had some guests at the dinner, and so like I said, people had been giving speeches and stuff.”
She also teased that there would be some special guest stars at the dinner table. As to who exactly that will be, that remains to be seen.
“And so one of our guest stars started us off just by thanking the show for what it has done for so many people,” the Pretty Little Liars alum recalled. “And that was really, really kind and nice to give us perspective of sometimes you do a show for so long or you are in [it], you’re around this table, you get so insular.”
“I mean, I often forget that my face is the one that’s on TV because we so connected with the crew and the writers and everything,” Vanessa added. “So it was cool to hear somebody have a perspective from an outsider kind of saying, this is such an impactful show, so important in the community of New York City and all of those things. And then Tom [Selleck] quoted the most beautiful poem, and we all just couldn’t breathe afterwards.”
