Fans of CBS’ new cop (and family) drama Blue Bloods won’t want to miss this Friday’s episode. It’s an intense one! Donnie Wahlberg spoke to us tonight about the series, working in New York, working with Tom Selleck and more, including this week’s very suspenseful episode.
Blue Bloods follows a family of cops in various stages of their careers, ranging form chief of police to rookie cop. Donnie Wahlberg plays Danny Raegan, the oldest son in the Raegen family and a fairly seasoned detective. On this week’s episode, he works with the other cops to track down a cop-killer.
Without going into too much detail about the episode (we don’t want to spoil it for you!), I can tell you that it becomes clear early on that Danny treats everyone involved in the officer’s death as a guilty party. Wahlberg talked a little bit about this in terms of how he handled that mindset.
“I wanted to bring a sense to Danny that every guy involved might as well have pulled the trigger. An officer is gone because of all their choices. Had one of them stepped up, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
You’ll definitely see Danny push the boundaries when it comes to tracking down the killer in this episode.
The episode features Jennifer Esposito (Samantha Who?), who’s partnered up with Danny on the case. Esposito and Wahlberg have a great chemistry and according to Wahlberg, she’ll be back! She’s currently shooting her fourth episode for the series.
Esposito isn’t the only one who has great chemistry with him. If you’ve been watching the show, you may have noticed how well Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan do on screen together. She plays his sister Erin on the series. Of his off-screen relationship with Moynahan, Wahlberg had good things to say…
“Bridget and I have a very great relationship. She’s, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. It’s a very trusting, brotherly/sisterly kind of relationship. We’re both single parents. We talk about all kinds of stuff off camera and we help each other a lot off camera and it flows very naturally on screen when we work together.”
As for his relationship with Tom Selleck, from the sound of it, Danny and Frank’s relationship is fairly comparable to Donnie and Toms.
“Tom sort of is like everyone’s dad. Frank puts up with Danny sticking heads in the toilet the way Tom puts up with Donnie tweeting between takes and letting fans know to watch the show.”
Wahlberg went into even more detail on his relationship with Tom when he talked about his own leadership tendencies and finding a connection with Tom, whose age and level of experience plays a factor in how they work together.
“I like being a leader in real life. I’m very much a leader in a lot of the work that I do or that I’ve done in my career. At the same time very now and again, I have to deal with other leaders who have a little bit more authority than me and I think that is somewhere where I connect with Danny. It’s fun, interesting and sort of electric playing Danny and having to deal with his dad, Frank. And at the same time, it’s fun being Donnie and being on set every day with Tom.Tom is a leader himself. He’s a very experienced, very smart guy. Very dedicated, much like myself. There are times when we both see the end game and we both want the same thing but we have very different ideas of how to do it. Knowing when to step up, that this might be the time that Tom could really use my input, or knowing when to step back and say, you know what? This is the time to trust Tom. It’s very truthful off screen as it in on screen for Danny and Frank.I gotta say, it’s fun and it really makes the job great for me. It’s fun coming to work everyday and working out scenes with Tom and working out ideas. Knowing who I am and knowing how I like to work, and also knowing and respecting who he is. We do have a great mutual respect, but much like the characters, there’s an experience difference. There’s an age difference. There’s differences that ring true in every scene that we do on screen and off. It’s a treat to explore that and it makes it very real for me.”
Danny isn’t Wahlberg’s first cop role, however from the way he puts it, the police have been a part of his life since he was a kid.
“When I was in Boston growing up, I pretty much knew all the cops in my neighborhood because they’d all arrested my brothers. They knew me, I knew them. We knew a lot of cops anyway. When you grow up in a city like Boston, where I grew up, a lot of kids became criminals or cops. I never really had a bad take on cops other than I hate when there’s one behind me on the highway.”
His childhood experience aside, numerous cop roles appear to have given Wahlberg a positive perspective on the police.
“I think throughout the years, I’ve gotten to work with so many of them, while I think I always had a certain level of respect for cops in general, its grown so much over the years. “
As for his feelings on working in New York, Wahlberg talked a little bit about the positive reactions he’s gotten from New Yorkers while shooting in the city.
"There’s nothing like playing a New Yorker and being on the streets of New York and having New Yorkers give you a pat on the back and it’s been happening every day."
"For a Bostonian… we live in the shadow of New York and to be acknowledged by New Yorkers is really the greatest feeling."
Finally, Wahlberg expressed a lot of enthusiasm about the cast, the writing and especially the family aspect of the show, which is really what sets Blue Bloods apart from a lot of other cop shows. In this Friday’s episode, Frank (Tom Selleck) mentions that the NYPD is like a family. Blue Bloods is a series that’s about an actual family working within the family that is the NYPD. In that sense, this is a family drama as much as it is a cop drama. On the subject of family, Wahlberg said he thinks the family scenes have a lot of truth in them. While only a few episodes have aired, I think it’s safe to say he’s right as the family aspect of the show stands out and is what’s driving the series forward between the case-of-the-week plot.
Whether or not you’ve seen the show, you should check it out this Friday. I think “Officer Down” may be the best episode yet.
Blue Bloods airs Fridays at 10/9c on CBS.
