Q&A: Donnie Wahlberg talks 'Blue Bloods'

Donnie Wahlberg, one of the stars of "Blue Bloods"
Photo: CBS, 2010

Some people still might think of Donnie Wahlberg as one of the "New Kids On The Block," but in recent years he's carved out a career as a steller actor.




Some of his best roles have been as police officers, so it's probably not surprising that he often steals the show in "Blue Bloods." Wahlberg plays Danny Reagan, a top NYPD detective and son of Police Commissioner Frank Regan played by Tom Selleck.

Wahlberg recently spoke with us about the show and what viewers should expect from the remainder of the season:

Question: How is your relationship with your co-stars on set?

Donnie:
Brigitte and I have a great relationship and she definitely is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. It is a very trusting brotherly/sisterly kind of relationship. We’re both single parents and we talk about all types of stuff, you know, off camera, and we help each other a lot off camera, and it flows very well naturally on screen.

Sometimes I look at Will and I see myself 10 years ago on Boomtown, you know, I see him wanting to explore certain elements of his characters story the way I did on Boomtown. I remember walking around town for the first 11 episodes saying, “When am I going to get to talk about my suicidal wife?” And carrying that into every scene that I did. And I see Will doing that and like an older brother, I’m able to sort of identify it, see it, recognize it, and sometimes help and sometimes encourage it, depending on what the situation calls for.
And you know Tom is like everyone’s dad, I’m like the nutty kid on set, but he knows how professional I come to play hard everyday, like Frank knows what Danny is, Danny is a little nutty. So, you know, Frank puts up with Danny’s sticking heads in the toilet, the way Tom puts up with Donny tweeting between takes letting fans know to watch the show.

Question: Going forward, do we get to learn about Danny’s background and his time in Iraq at all?

Donnie:
Of course I want to get to it, but I’m not desperate to get to it. In a perfect world, we’ll have a couple of seasons to explore all of this stuff, and as you know that work in TV, you run out of material after a while on TV, so the more we can come up with good stuff, like Friday’s episode.

The more we can save for when it’s the right time when it’s needed. Obviously, I want to go into a lot of the stuff with a lot of these characters. Not just Danny, I want to know about Will, and see whether he’s going to investigate the Blue Templar. I’m very curious, obviously that’ll have implications for my character, perhaps.
But I want to see how it all goes, I want to see where a lot of this stuff goes. Fortunately, things are going great, and hopefully, we’ll have the chance to explore a lot of this stuff. It’s definitely what we all want, the writers and the cast.

Question: When you were a kid before you became famous, what did you think about the police when you were around Boston, and when you were in your wilder days?

Donnie:
When I was in Boston growing up, I pretty much knew all the cops in the neighborhood, because they had arrested all my brothers, so I’d see them, they knew me, I knew them, and we knew a lot of the cops anyways.
When you grow up in a city like Boston, a lot of kids become criminals or cops. I never really had a bad take on cops, except I hate when there’s one behind me on the highway. I generally feel like I just robbed a bank, even though I’ve done nothing. I don’t know why that feeling comes over me, I’ll never get used to having a cop behind me on the highway.
I think that throughout the years, I’ve got to work with so many of them, I’ve developed respect for cops in general, it’s grown so much over the years. As in so many parts of life, there’s always some guys, some people who just break the rules, and do things that aren’t right. I think certain people make mistakes, and the cops as a whole pay for it. 9 out of 10, maybe 99 of 100 people are trying to do the best they can, and very dangerous circumstances, they make judgment calls.
I know they don’t want to go around sticking people’s heads in the toilet, but you know they wish they could if it’s the right circumstance. When that character in the pilot all but admits that he had that little girl, it’s at that moment that every person in the world, the parents of the victim, the cops, friends of a victim, would all want to be able to take the law into their own hands and do something to save a child. Unfortunately, they can’t do it.
In our pilot episode, it worked out for Danny and the little girl, but it’s a tough spot to be in. Imagine the burden of having to save a little girls life, but having so many restrictions you can’t do what it takes. It’s tough, and everyone has to have rights, and we all have to deal with it.

Question: Now that the show is up and running, and people tune in does this take pressure off of you, or does it add pressure?

Donnie:
When I think about it, it only adds pressure, so I try not to think about it. I control none of that, I just control what I do. For actors or for anybody dealing with numbers and polls, the more you look, the more pressure you put on yourself.

If you get 20,000,000 viewers on day one, and you look at the numbers on day 2, and they’re at 19,000,000 you’re like what happened? The reality is where we’re a couple million more viewers than what they thought we’d get, and you know that’s good. What we do on set, and what the actors talk about on set, is really trying to control what we can control, and you know it’s a bright mix of what works for our audience, it’s identifying who they are and servicing what they want and also servicing the characters as best as they can.

It’s tricky, but the pressure never goes away. So many things at stake, and we treat every episode very importantly. I don’t take days off and I think my cast mates are the same way. I come to play every day and to me, it’s like a concert every day or a movie every day, a challenge every day, I want to be as good as I can be every day.

Question: I love that the show is filming in New York, what’s it like actually being there instead of a soundstage in Hollywood or Canada pretending to be in New York?

Donnie: Well, I’m sitting in a building that I live in that was built in 1885. think, I’m looking out the window at the Williamsburg Bridge, and there’s a cool breeze coming in, and I feel lucky every day. In the “Officer Down” episode in the climactic scene, where they take out the bad guy, which I shouldn’t give away, but I’m sure you’ve seen it, maybe you won’t give it away to your readers, but we’re shooting under the Manhattan bridge in DUMBO, and all these guys are up there working on the bridge, and in between takes all these guys would yell down, “Donnie we love you man!” and it was so much fun, so great.

I don’t know how anyone could hear in DUMBO, it’s the loudest place on earth, but those guys’ voices cut right through all the trains, noise, the traffic, and the welding. It’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. Today I was walking down the street and this couple of guys doing some construction on a brownstone were like, ‘Hey, way to go Wahlberg.”
As a Bostonian, we live in the shadow of New York, and to be acknowledged by New Yorker, it’s the greatest feeling.

Question: Can you talk about the challenge of playing a cop looking for a cop killer? How is that a unique challenge for you?

Donnie: The struggle and challenge for me of playing Danny was sometimes the writer in the story has it’s own purpose, and that is to get from Point A to Point Z in an entertaining and dramatic way with information to keep the audience informed.

But for me, playing Danny, I looked at every single person connected to the case as a cop killer, and I think there’s an element of truth in that. I think that if an officer does go down, in the real world, anyone associated with it, is dealing with a cop being killed, and that raises the stakes for everything. So when I showed up in an early scene in the episode where an electrician is being interrogated, he was in cahoots with those guys, and I thought Danny’s take is that they’re all guilty, and they’re all involved, therefore they’re all cop killers.

The challenge then became how to bring that spirit into the scene, even if the scene didn’t suggest that. Just to see ‘Look, this guy will connect us to this guy, who will connect us to the actual guy who pulled the trigger.’ I wanted to bring a sense to Danny that every guy involved may have well pulled the trigger, because a young officer is gone because of all of their choices.
Had one of them stepped up, maybe it wouldn’t of happened. For me, the challenge is respecting what’s on the page, but also respecting the character where he comes from and where his choices maybe in a situation like this, and finding a balance of not going too far, of I’m going rogue on script and playing his own movie, but pushing the boundaries that Danny is doing everything he can do to make sure that justice is served.

Question: How do you view the real line between duty and vengeance? Especially when one of their own is killed. Isn’t that the line between good cop and bad cop?

Donnie: Well, that’s really an impossible question to answer. I’m not really a cop in real life, I could tell you if someone in my family was killed and what that might feel like, or if someone was violated that was close to me, I might tell you what that might feel like, or what I may want to do.

But, I’m Donnie playing Danny, his want for justice is bigger than he understands, I don’t think he knows what’s pushing him, I don’t think Donnie knows what’s pushing Danny. There’s still a lot to be discovered with these characters, and there’s a lot of curiosity as to what happens to Danny’s brother in the show and what happened to the other son Joe, he was killed in the line of duty investigating the Blue Templar, and it may be something he’s a part of.

There’s a lot of mystery to that and I don’t know what exactly is driving Danny, I know that in this episode, I played it the way that I think Danny should and he won’t stop or sleep until he gets the guy who did it, and as far as who’s involved he did it. So, they all need to be stopped.

In real life, would I take vengeance on somebody? Hell no, I’d like to think I’m a little bit more of a forgiving person. If I were out there on the street risking my life and somebody carelessly mowed down somebody who was doing the same, I’m sure I’d be driven to do all I can to get that person off the street.

question: What’s your favorite part about playing Danny?

Donnie:
I think the freedom that I have with him. I think playing Danny was good because I get to be free and something different. If I feel I’m doing something redundant, but sometimes scripts are written to guide an actor down a certain road and my favorite days are when I’m being guided by the script down a certain road.
I’m able to make discoveries and try something free and off the cuff. Today on set, I did a Quazi-Columbo moment, it was really fun and it didn’t feel false, it felt in the realm of Danny and it’s what attracted me to this role. There were a few other opportunities to do other shows, and do other things, but this part, beside the fact that I love the cast, and Tom, and I loved the pilot script, I love the freedom this character presented to me as an actor.

Question: What do you think it is about this cop drama that makes it stand apart from others?

Donnie:
I think the audience is going to have their own opinion, but for me, what attracted me, was the cast, the script, and my character.

In my eyes, it’s the kind of character I don’t play often. I can play an emotional beat with a suspect, I can play an angry beat, I can play a fun beat. I get to explore the different colors of this character. And the family stuff I think is a big part of what is working for the audience, but it’s also a big part of what’s working for the cast as well.
When I read the pilot, I didn’t see my sister sitting across the table saying these lines to me. Bridget and I, my sister in the show, we had many similar arguments,and when something resonates like that so truthfully, it creates an attraction.
When we did that dinner scene, I knew I was going to have a good time doing it. I knew it would be tense, it would be fun, and it would be alive. When you do TV and it’s a grind and when you work 5 days a week, I look for something that’s going to make me feel alive. My character has a lot of freedom and it makes me feel alive. In the dinner scene, they have a lot of truth in them and that makes me feel alive.

To feel alive a few days a week during episodic television, it’s a gift, it’s an electricity, and I get to feel it more than most.

Question: Did you do any research to prepare for the role? Spend some time with the NYPD?

Donnie:

Well, I did, and I spent time with them before on other projects. I played a hostage negotiator on a show called ‘Killpoint’ I played a guy in Pittsburg, but I worked with Jack Cambria, the head of the head of the hostage negotiating team for the NYPD, and I worked with other cops before.

I think the thing with this character was the preparation is obvious. You have to be prepared, you have to know what you’re doing and have to pull it off. It’s very important to handle people the way I do.

In the pilot, had I not worked on it as hard as I did, it would’ve been different with the suspects. I played Danny a little aggressive, but the reality is going in with the mindset that they are the bad guy. Controlling them, the environment, their energy is very important, and I think that when they are working against the clock and working with potential suspects, and everyone needed to be controlled until Danny got the information he needed.

The other part of the character is that he is a very experienced guy that marches to the beat of his own drum, but is the son of a very powerful man. I think that’s the part that I really wanted to explore and wanted to discover with each episode. I think a lot of times, I was allowed to interpret scenes the way we want.
I can’t really read a scene that says, ‘Danny goes to the fridge and eats a slice of pizza,’ and I turn around and then Danny is hallucinating on drugs, it’s not like we’re a bunch of insane people running an asylum. With each scene that Danny has with Frank, it’s like to be the son of a powerful man by following in his footsteps, but trying to be yourself.
I’m sure there’s a lot of resentment for Danny toward his dad, a lot of gratitude, I’m sure there’s time where he takes advantage of his relationship with his dad, and I’m sure where he resents having that relationship with his dad. It’s a burden, or a insistence, it gives him privileges that he doesn’t have or hasn’t earned. There’s so much in that relationship that it’s really the part that I didn’t want to research, but wanted to develop.

There’s no one answer, I’m not playing a guy who simply resents or worships his dad, and I’m playing a guy who runs the full gambit of everything between of both scenarios.

Question: What aspects of Danny do you find to be like yourself?


Donnie:

I think the way Danny is like me, is that he’s mischievous. In the final scene with the cigar, there was a lot of Donnie in that scene, I think there was a lot of Danny was ripping dad in the final scene and teasing dad a bit, but that was very much a Donnie characteristic.
I like being a leader in real life, and you know, I’m a leader in all the work I’ve done in my career, but at the same time, I have to deal with other leaders that have more authority than me, and that’s where I connect with Danny. It’s fun, interesting, and somewhat electric having been Danny and having to deal with his dad Frank, and it’s fun being Donnie and being on set every day with Tom.

Tom’s a leader himself; he’s an experienced, smart, dedicated person himself, much like myself. We both see the head and game and want the same thing, but different ideas on how to do it. And knowing when to step up that this might be the time that Tom can really use my input, or knowing when to step back this is the time I got to trust Tom.
It’s very truthful off screen as it is on screen for Danny and Frank, I mean, I got to say its fun and makes the job great for me. It’s fun coming to work every day, and working out scenes and ideas with Tom you know, knowing who I am and knowing how I like to work. We have a great mutual respect. There’s an experience difference, there’s an age difference, and that’s what brings truth to every scene we do both on screen and off, and it’s a real treat to explore that and makes it very real for me

source: http://www.examiner.com/blue-bloods-in-national/q-a-donnie-wahlberg-talks-blue-bloods