Here’s why Blue Bloods family dinners feel so real.
Let’s face it, family dinners can be a blessing or a torture. Spending time with your family members is not always a welcome activity, especially when you want to be alone at some point. However, that’s not why family dinners have been a wild ride for the cast of Blue Bloods.
The Sunday Reagan dinners have long been a staple of the much-loved CBS police procedural. Featured in nearly every episode, they showcase that special family bond that fans love so much and allow the characters to connect on both a personal and professional level. For the cast, these dinners are both a blessing and a curse.
While filming dinner scenes is a great opportunity for the actors, who are usually filming in separate locations, to get together and catch up, it also takes up a considerable amount of their time. With close-ups of everyone in the room and rearranging the table and food after each take to maintain continuity, shooting dinner scenes is a long process.
Bridget Moynahan, who plays beloved Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan, revealed to People that filming the scenes can take up to several hours. She also shared that the secret ingredient to the authenticity of the scenes is that all the food on the Reagan table is real and has to be eaten. Sometimes for four hours straight.
‘I think the first couple of seasons I didn’t eat anything and then I moved into mashed potatoes, which was really bad,’ Moynahan said. ‘So for a few years there, I was eating too many mashed potatoes for four hours.’
No doubt the weekly mashed potato diet was not the healthiest option for Moynahan. Thankfully, the actress made a change after realizing this.
‘I mean I just made bad choices for those couple years,’ Moynahan added. ‘Now I’ve moved to the cucumbers.’
While it takes skill and a certain amount of cunning to play eating for hours without digesting a large amount of calories, the Blue Bloods cast learned to do it with class over the years, and their joy is visible on screen. The family dinner scenes became the series’ hallmark, appealing to all generations of viewers.
‘With the older generation, it kind of brings back the memories of when they used to do that,’ Moynahan explained. ‘And the younger generation is kind of yearning for that, so it’s hitting everyone I think.’
