Len Cariou Teases ‘Emotional’ Final Reagan Family Dinner Scene on ‘Blue Bloods’ Season 14
No matter what, the Reagan family always comes together for family dinners in each episode of Blue Bloods. The same is the case in the show’s 14th and final season, but emotions were certainly running high during filming.
Cast member Len Cariou told TV Insider that filming the last family dinner on the show was “emotional” during a November 1 interview.
“It wasn’t the last thing we did, but it was nice in one sense to be in the room together, but it was a tough day for us,” Len, 85, said. “And not everybody, of course, on the show is there when we’re filming that. So there’s that fragment of it.”
“But the interesting thing about that was that the very first scene that we filmed when we made the pilot was the dinner scene,” he noted. “The first thing we put on film was that scene back in Episode 101. So that was pretty interesting. We talked a bit about that because there were a couple of cast changes when the show finally launched. So it was pretty emotional.”
The Tony Award winner talked about the continuity of Reagan family dinners throughout the seasons.
“Yeah, that was Leonard Goldberg’s idea, to have that in every episode because he wanted to show the world that aspect of a family, of a cop family, how they functioned away from the job,” he explained. “So it was kind of the core of the whole thing.”
“Mr. Goldberg thought that was going to be — it was a gamble for him,” Len revealed. “He wanted it to be in every episode if it worked. And so when we all got together that first day, we said, ‘Why are we doing this as the first thing that we’re filming? We hardly know one another. We’re supposed to be a family — and multi-generational yet.’ But he said, ‘I got to make sure that it works. If it doesn’t work, then I’m going to have to rethink things.’ But after he saw it, he said, ‘It works well. I can’t imagine the thing without the family dinner. I don’t think it would’ve been the same show at all.’”
The series finale of Blue Bloods will air on Friday, December 13, at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. Currently, there are a lot of theories floating around about whether or not the Reagan family will make it out of the final episode unscathed.
A popular theory on Reddit was that Henry would die in the final season. However, at the time of publication, the character is still alive. The cast teased there were some emotional moments to come in the final episodes of the season.
“There’ll be a lot of tears. I think the same kind of tears we had but there is a very sad scene that happens in the middle of the final episode which will be very emotional, but I think the audience is going to be really happy,” cast member Donnie Wahlberg said while appearing on Andy Cohen’s radio show in October. “I think it feels like a finale but a hopeful forward-thinking finale.”
