Reagan family dinners have always been a highlight of Blue Bloods. But Tom Selleck admitted he got a bit fed up with the food during one dinner scene on the show.
On November 29, CBS aired a one-hour special titled Blue Bloods: Celebrating a Family Legacy, which took a closer look at the show’s iconic dinner scenes. Viewers may have noticed that certain characters have continuities during each family dinner, whether it’s Frank Reagan buttering bread or Danny Reagan eating multiple portions.
Zachary Badalucco has been the Blue Bloods prop master since 2021 and explained one quirky rule during family dinners.
“Before I got here, chicken cutlets were banned,” he said during the special. “Somebody broke their fork because the chicken cutlet was so hard.”
A clip from a past interview with Tom, 79, then played, explaining the chicken cutlet incident.
“I did lose it one time a couple years ago,” he said with a laugh. “We were having chicken cutlets and they were overcooked and they were like metal. And we often use plastic knives and forks because it doesn’t make noise. And I just lost it a little bit. It wasn’t a tantrum but I just tossed it like a frisbee across the room to make a point.”
Tom previously discussed the chicken cutlet matter during a May interview with Esquire.
“We have plastic forks and knives painted silver for the dinner scenes,” he explained to the outlet. “I got a chicken cutlet one day and I broke two forks in the middle of my close-up, and I really got pissed. It was not my finest hour on Blue Bloods. I took that cutlet and threw it like a frisbee across the room, which I have never heard the end of since.”
Other secrets that were revealed about the dinner scenes included the fact that Donnie Wahlberg “eats like a madman,” per Will Estes. There was a clip featured with Donnie saying that he ate six cannolis during one scene.
But something fans might not know is that the first-ever scene shot for Blue Bloods was a family dinner back when the cast barely knew each other. Tom met Donnie the day before the scene and met Will, 46, and Bridget Moynahan the day of.
Since then, they’ve sat at the dinner table 286 times through the seasons. And several of the cast members revealed that filming the dinner scenes takes “forever.” Sometimes it takes up to eight hours.
“The other castmates all have their own approach to eating dinner,” Donnie said. “Bridget looks like she’s eating but she never eats.”
Bridget, 53, explained that it took her a few seasons to learn how to make it look like she was eating during the episodes.
But Donnie never hesitates to eat while filming the family dinner scenes. “I’ll start eating during the first take and then it tastes good and then by the end of a dinner scene taping I may literally have eaten the equivalent of like 12 pork chops,” he confessed.