Tom Selleck has long since been the face of Blue Bloods, but fans’ favorite part of many episodes in the CBS series is the family dinner scenes. Those family dinners provide a sense of nostalgia or perhaps a reminder to gather one’s own family around the table.
Whatever emotions they evoke in viewers, the Reagan family dinners in every Blue Bloods episode aren’t a coincidence. No matter the chaos that might swirl in the NYPD or a city courthouse that day, the family always gathers for evening meals, with patriarch Frank Reagan (Selleck) at the head of the table and “Pop” Reagan (Len Cariou) opposite him. The dinners have become integral to the show — even if Selleck didn’t think they would survive the pilot.
The ‘Blue Bloods’ family dinner scenes are now iconic
Blue Bloods’ Reagan clan is tight-knit, destined to serve New York, and always up for convening around the table to resolve their issues. Those close family ties drive the family dinners, and it’s palpable. The meals have taken on an identity of their own — so much so that Bridget Moynahan (who plays Erin Reagan) co-wrote The Blue Bloods Cookbook, including recipes from the show’s cast members.
The family dinners were baked into the show’s DNA, Len Cariou explained in a 92nd Street Y panel celebrating the show’s 150th episode in 2017. According to Cariou, the show’s creator, Leonard Goldberg (who died in 2019), saw artwork by Norman Rockwell depicting a Thanksgiving dinner and used that as a jumping-off point for the show’s mealtime dynamics.
“That was his inspiration. [Goldberg] said, ‘I want to have a family dinner scene in every episode. That’ll be the glue that brings it all together,’” Cariou explained.
Tom Selleck loved the ‘Blue Bloods’ dinner scenes but had 1 major concern when he read the first scripts
Selleck said that when he read the first scripts for Blue Bloods, the dinner scenes stuck out, but he didn’t mentally get attached to them. When he met with Goldberg to discuss the show’s potential, he said he expressed concern that the dinner scenes would be too long and get cut from the scripts.
“I said, ‘You know what I really like in this thing is this family dinner. But it’s about eight pages long, and the network is going to cut that out. And [Goldberg] said, ‘No. That is a set piece of the show,’” Selleck explained while on the panel. “That was a deliberate design of Leonard’s from day one.”
Though some cast members knew the dinner scene was purposeful, producer and writer Kevin Wade said Goldberg didn’t explicitly tell the writers to include it in every episode until later.
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“155 [episodes] later, as much as we love doing it, it took us until about the beginning of season 2 to realize, ‘Oh, you have to do this in every show,’” Wade said.
The scenes are a labor of love to film
The Reagan family dinner scenes have become something of folklore in the Blue Bloods fan base because of how intricate and time-consuming they are to film.
The actors eat real food during each take — or at least find ways to make it look like they’re actually eating each time. It can be quite a feat, depending on what’s served. Selleck has said some dinners take up to eight hours to film. Other cast members confirmed on the panel that it takes at least six hours.
“Six hours and a lot of broccoli,” Donnie Wahlberg (who plays Danny Reagan) joked. The cast has even asked the crew not to serve certain foods like broccoli because “after three hours, it gets problematic.”
Despite the marathon filming and pushing the same slice of roast beef around their plates for hours, the castmates generally love filming the dinner scenes as much as fans enjoy watching them.
Selleck explained that on ensemble shows like Blue Bloods, weeks can pass without seeing co-stars if they’re primarily in scenes without one another for that episode. But in the police drama, those family dinners bring the entire cast together every eight days. Selleck calls them a “little actor family get-together.”
Thirteen seasons in, and those dinners have solidified a family dynamic the actors don’t need to fake much anymore.
Blue Bloods airs new episodes Fridays at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central Time) on CBS.
