SEAL Team came to an end earlier in the fall 2024 TV schedule after seven seasons, 114 episodes, one network TV cancellation, and a switch over to a streamer that proved to be the ideal platform. David Boreanaz starred as Jason Hayes, the lead of Bravo Team, but there was a lot more to Jason's struggles than his action-packed adventures. Now, with the final season and full run of the series soon to be available in a way beyond a Paramount+ subscription, Boreanaz reflected to CinemaBlend on why he originally passed on SEAL Team and is so proud now.
With both SEAL Team's final season and full series available via DVD as of December 17, the time couldn't be better to look back at where the hit drama started and what could have been very different. When I spoke with Boreanaz about the entire show arriving on physical media as well as streaming, I noted that it has always struck me as quite cinematic for a TV production. Boreanaz responded:
That pilot was shot in New Orleans, and I had originally been offered this role by the network, and I turned it down. I didn't want to move to New Orleans and there was no ice for my kid to go ice skating. I had just finished a series, and I was like, 'I'm not moving to New Orleans.' Fortunately, it came back around, which I've never heard of. It was just fate that I would come in, and [I] parachuted into a show that was three days into production, had a massive amount of money in it, and was bleeding. And I came in and saved the show. It would have been DOA, for sure. That's the way I look at it.
Back in SEAL Team's CBS days, the network evidently had its eye on David Boreanaz for Jason Hayes before the actor was ready to sign on for another lead role. He had just finished twelve seasons as leading man of Bones over on Fox, which had followed five seasons of Angel and a recurring gig on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fortunately, the opportunity arose a second time, Boreanaz signed on as Jason Hayes, and the rest is history. Boreanaz went on:
Cinematically, when I arrived, it was like, 'This is how we're shooting it.' When you have a director of photography by the name of Jimmy Muro, who has shot Dances with Wolves, Heat, Kevin Costner's Horizon, they want to think scope and production value. And we achieved that. Also, we were very live with it. We had no rehearsals, really no rehearsals. It was get a camera, stick it in the person's face, and let's go. So the energy was real. It was alive.
The energy was so "real" and "alive" that David Boreanaz had decided even before the cancellation that he was "done with the show," and it's interesting to consider what SEAL Team might have had in store with what was written before news broke that Season 7 would be the last. He continued, explaining what the experience of joining the show could be like for newcomers and what about that makes him proud now:
I always said [for] people that came on, it was very easy to get exposed if you weren't prepared for the role that you're playing on the show. But what's great about it is how the cast would surround the person and lift them up and actually support that and say, 'Hey, we can do this.' That's really now a huge, proud achievement that all of us had, as far as the cast was concerned.
The cast coming together to lift up newcomers is only one element of SEAL Team that David Boreanaz was proud of during our conversation, as he went on to share that he's "very proud that we were able to sustain it and have our fans continue to walk with us to another platform" after the CBS cancellation. He also shared what it means to have played Jason Hayes for the better part of a decade despite the toll:
Being able to play a character like this for so many years was hard on my body, physically and mentally, and I was just so happy to finish this series. When we shot in Colombia on that last day, it was the biggest weight off of my shoulders, on so many levels. The fans were fantastic. They seem to have liked it. For the veterans… most important to me was, 'Hey, this is a love letter to those that serve, those that have served and sacrificed.' The biggest award I could get from a show like this is actually having them say 'Thank you' or say 'You saved my life. You allowed me to find the strength to get help dealing with TBI or PTSD,' whatever that is. So I'm very proud of that.
SEAL Team may have been cinematic and action-packed from the very first episode, but a lot of the story was dedicated to the members of Bravo processing that intensity when they were home and trying to pick up normal lives. Sometimes, that involved post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries, and David Boreanaz evidently got feedback from real-life veterans about how seeing that on screen helped them. Who wouldn't be proud of that?
If you want to revisit the seventh season or series as a whole along with some special features that you won't find streaming, you can find them on DVD from retailers now. The SEAL Team: The Final Season set spans three discs and offers more than 35 minutes of special features, including deleted scenes, featurettes, and the always-popular blooper reel.
If you're looking for SEAL Team: The Complete Series, you can find every episode of David Boreanaz's show across a whopping 30 discs, and special features totaling more than five-and-a-half hours of special features. Both sets are available now with more to offer than you'll find on Paramount+, just in time for the holidays!
