ET's Matt Cohen was on the set of the Paramount+ drama while they filmed the milestone hour and caught up with the cast.
David Boreanaz and the cast of SEAL Team are celebrating a momentous occasion: 100 episodes! Only ET was on the set of the Paramount+ drama in July, where Boreanaz and his castmates reflected on reaching a rare TV milestone, which drops Sunday.
"Just being able to be in this moment and reflect, not only on what the whole crew and the cast has accomplished, it's more about getting to this spot and saying, 'Wow, all those shows and all those moments led to this one particular moment,'" the actor and executive producer shared with ET's Matt Cohen, "where it’s an understanding of that work and understanding of the pain you had to go through in order to get to that end of the journey. It's very reflective in a lot of ways. I look back at my body and my mind, hurting a little bit, but I feel good. It’s an extraordinary experience to be part of and [I'm] so very grateful."
"I celebrated 100 episodes on Stage 3 for CSI: New York so it's kind of nostalgic to see the staff talking about how important it is," A.J. Buckley said. "This is an incredibly special cast and the story that we are telling and being part of something that really matters and the men and women that have come home and had these stories and put them on a platform. It has been an honor to work side by side with Neil [Brown Jr.] and the rest of the cast, to be a part of something that is really held to the authenticity of what's out there for these men and women, how hard it is for them coming home."
Added Brown, "The fortunate thing about our show is everyone knows that we have more special operators, more veterans working on the show than any show or film to my knowledge, which is incredible and so you get to hear their stories constantly and you get to impart what you learn from them into your character and into your backstory and into the subtext. So it's really great being able to show their struggles and to be able to do it honestly and in an authentic way."
Of course, Boreanaz is no stranger to headlining a long-running show, having celebrated 200 episodes of Bones and surpassing 100 on Angel. The actor shared his secret to maintaining longevity on a TV show to be able to reach the pinnacle.
"It is a combination and it always comes down to the writing first and foremost and being able to have the commitment to take the characters to a deeper level because it’s one thing to get a script and look at it and understand it and try to do what’s there, but you want to push yourself even more and excite the writers to write more for it, right?" Boreanaz said. "And that’s your job as an actor. That’s what we do and I’ve been blessed and fortunate to do many shows like that. This show in particular, for me, has really opened up great opportunities to learn more about myself and take a character to higher levels. It’s a blast, it really is a blast."
Boreanaz said that it's important for him to "stay present" when it comes to picking the projects he chooses to invest time and energy into. "I really just stay in the now and I don’t look at what the show may be, I look at where I am with a show and what the character can do, and I work on it day to day. It’s not really about getting to 50 or getting to a hundred or whatever that is, just to get a pilot picked up is so very rare and hard in this business. To get the show off and running that’s even tough," he acknowledged. "For me, just stay in the now and work in the present and take it from there."
In the 100th episode, Bravo team unexpectedly finds themselves on a deeply personal mission after returning home from Syria. As he described it, it's "a complex episode," explaining that he had desires to pay homage to the 1978 war film, The Deer Hunter.
"I wanted to have that kind of bond with the brothers so you get a little bit of sense of that going on. As intense as that movie was, it is not The Deer Hunter. It’s really taking these characters and these brothers to a spot that really examines their journey and what their pain is all about and if they make it," Boreanaz said. "It’s a character-driven show and this episode, in particular, is really going to open some eyes."
Boreanaz and his co-stars also teased the upcoming intense hour.
"It's character-driven, so I can’t give too much of what Jason Hayes is gonna go through, but he’s been through a lot of pain, and he’ll find some light here," Boreanaz said of Sunday's installment. "I will say that the universe will be very tricky for him. It’ll be very tricky for this character and we'll see how he accepts that and how he goes forward with it."
Castmate Judd Lormand used "intensity" and "change" to describe the 100th episode. "There are a lot of changes this season," he hinted, "and there's always intensity on the show. But with change this year."
Added Toni Trucks, "There are a lot of characters, without giving too much away, that are changing positions that will rock the dynamic of the team in a permanent way."
As for what they'd like to see their characters do that they haven't yet?
"We've done a hell of a lot. We've flown on Blackhawks, we've been on little birds... This would be a little boys' dream. We're literally going to work, we're playing with guns and doing everything. The one thing that I've always wanted to do was dangle from a helicopter," Buckley said. "I want to be like [Die Hard's] John McClane. [He] was my favorite character. I just want to be John McClane from a thing and be like, 'Yeah, yeah!'"
"I want to fly a plane. Shout-out to Top Gun!" Brown pitched.
New episodes of SEAL Team drop Sundays on Paramount+.
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