How the Blue Bloods cast pretended to eat while filming Reagan family dinners: ‘We all have tricks’

The Blue Bloods cast have spilled the beans on how they navigated eating while filming the show's beloved Reagan family dinners. 

During a PaleyFest panel in honor of the series' final season on Thursday, stars Tom Selleck, Vanessa Ray, and Donnie Wahlberg looked back at some of their tricks — and the biggest mistakes they made — at the table over the past 14 seasons.

"The truth can be told, because the eight episodes [of the final season] are done," Selleck, who played proud patriarch Frank Reagan, declared at the event. "We all have tricks. Bridget [Moynahan] is a food masher. She keeps her hand real active and combines her potatoes and everything. I butter rolls. I know everybody else has some tricks they might confess before it's too late."

The cast of 'Blue Bloods' at dinner.

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Ray, who played Eddie Janko, told the audience that she took advice from Moynahan and her costar Len Cariou, quickly joining the potato smasher club after getting a bit too excited during her first few meals.

"The first several times I was at the dinner table, I did eat the rolls. I didn't just butter the rolls," she revealed. "And I think Bridget, at one point, was like, 'You sure you want to do that?' I'm like, 'Why? What?' [And she said,] 'Well, it's your funeral, girl.' And I kept eating and I realized, 'Oh, you can't eat 17 rolls.'"

Wahlberg, on the other hand, maintained that he really did eat during the dinners — but was selective about what he was munching on depending on his busy work schedule with his pop group, New Kids on the Block.

"There's a silly part of the eating and a real part of the eating, and the silly part is if I was going on tour the following summer, I ate only vegetables," he confessed. "If I wasn't, I ate whatever. And I did get high a few times off the whipped cream in the desserts. I got these sugar highs. But, in truth, I wanted to eat as the character because I thought it was as far as I could go to talking with my mouth full in that first dinner scene."

The cast and showrunner of 'Blue Bloods' at PaleyFest 2024.

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It was also the perfect way to show off his character Danny's cheeky personality. "It's like, throw an insult across the table without even looking up, take a bite of my food, and keep moving," he teased. "I just thought it was a way to be a bull in a china shop in a place where I can't really do it. There's only so far you can go at the table, because if Dad doesn't crack it with the head, Grandpa will. That was just my thing."

While others had a hard time resisting the delicious food laid out in front of them, Selleck revealed that the idea of talking and eating at the same time was his biggest "problem" on set.

"At the Selleck family dinner table — when it was just my two brothers and my mom and dad, we'd always eat breakfast — you did not talk with your mouth full," he said. "So I can't really do it at family dinner. So I said, 'Well, you better not eat something, because you might not swallow it by the time your next line comes.' Very complicated."

Part 2 of the final season of Blue Bloods premieres today at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.