In the final season of Paramount+’s SEAL Team, Special Operations Commander Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) and the elite Navy SEAL unit BRAVO fight their way out of a deadlock and back into combat. Dealing with a traumatic brain injury and a new team member who’s thrown into the mix and causing some tension is a potentially fatal distraction when you’re on a dangerous, high-risk mission. At a time when the team needs to pull together more than ever, Jason is also working to prioritize his family so they don’t feel like an afterthought.
In this exclusive interview with Collider, Boreanaz, who also serves as an executive producer, talked about why being a part of SEAL Team was such a humbling experience, what made him decide that Season 7 would be his last as Jason Hayes, what he’s most proud of accomplishing with the series, shaking things up with a new team member, doing some of the most intense action scenes, and the very real possibility that his character might not make it to the end of the season. He also talked about how he’s working on developing a variety of projects and why he’s interested in the possibility of resurrecting Bones, if that happens.
Collider: Early on in this season, we’ve seen some of the effects of what your character is facing, which is terrifying because it puts his life in danger. How will that continue to affect him? What do you hope that storyline teaches viewers about what real service members and veterans go through?
DAVID BORANAZ: Yeah, we definitely went through a lot of trauma with Jason Hayes over a lot of seasons. Eight years just adds to the authenticity that leads to that remarkable outburst of, “Thank you for shining a light into that darkness. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for helping me get help.” It was just a huge, humbling experience to be a part of. For us this season, it was a deep dive into how these guys deal with their first murder, how it haunts them, and how they deal with it. It’s something that a lot of them go through a lot, and it causes nightmares and trauma.
I decided to end the show the way I wanted to end the show with the character. For me, it was over. I knew that and that’s what I expressed to them. I said, “I’m done, physically and mentally.” It’s hard to portray emotions like that, day in and day out, when you’re filming them. So from my perspective, as an actor portraying these emotions, I can only imagine what it’s like for people who are actually going through it. The help is there, it’s still there, but it takes time. There’s a process to it. There’s a trauma to it. Ultimately, I don’t think it ever really goes away, but you can understand how to manage it through consistency and discipline. That’s what we wanted to show in these stories for this season. I know, for a fact, that it happened. From my character’s perspective, can he do it? I don’t know. He may not make it. He may succumb on the battlefield. He may ultimately die on the battlefield. That’s what he had to do.
What are you most excited for fans to see in this final season? You’ve talked about ending the way you always wanted to, but what are you most proud of in terms of that, because it’s not something you always get to do?
BORANAZ: Yeah, I’m proud of the whole circle of it. I’m proud that I was able to, as a character, examine TBI and PTS, and the welcome and unwelcome return from the mission, the relationships, the indoctrination and the manipulation from the corporate world of the government. We’ve always prided ourselves on not being a political show because we’re not. We have a mission. We have a job. That’s what we do. We don’t look at it any other way. To be able to look at the character, it’s a personal journey to really go through it and feel what it is. We dug beneath the surface and went deep. This season is going to be the pinnacle of that. We worked really hard to shoot some of these scenes. It’s physically demanding, it’s mentally demanding, and it’s definitely going to show in epic proportions how we’ve always shot every show, from day one. I’m proud of that, from a producer’s perspective.
