‘SEAL Team’: David Boreanaz on the moment he knew he was ‘done’ and Jason’s possible end
Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) shocked his superiors when he publicly spoke about his traumatic brain injury at the end of SEAL Team Season 6. What that means for his career—as well as those who have spoken out about their own issues in support of him—is yet to be seen.
The military drama returns to Paramount+ for its seventh and final season with a two-episode premiere on Sunday, August 11, and just as the show is saying goodbye, so might Jason, Boreanaz tells TV Insider. Below, he talks about knowing he was “done,” how the show could end for Jason, and more.
Last season ended with Jason talking about his traumatic brain injury and then the other SEALs coming out to support him. How is he doing this season?
David Boreanaz: His mind is almost very familiar with the moment when he’s dealing with what these executives are going through. That’s always been a consistent thread to Jason’s mind and how it ultimately balances with his heart and what he thinks is the balance that can’t be balanced or what he thinks is right is that he feels like he’s the problem and the problems, the difficult task of a character like this is to understand those fleeting moments of one emotion and then completely go in a different direction with it and how that affects them.
For us, it’s like, okay, trauma is your first kill. How do you deal with that? So starting the season, it was like, okay, this is the perfect way to end that cycle for this character. For me, I knew it was the right way and I knew I was done before the writers’ strike happened. I had expressed my desire to not be on the show anymore. I was done regardless of whether they wanted to do two more seasons or one more season, I was done. So then the writers’ strike happened and six months later, it was decided. So we were able to put this final season in to help complete that cycle for him. So that trauma and how he deals with it will be half before trying to think that he’s in a good place living with his family and seeing his daughter get married and seeing his daughter’s boyfriend go down the same path as him, it’s very reflective. It’s almost like a reflection of his whole ending in a lot of ways. The reflection of that kind of character is that you can always die on the battlefield. And that’s something we’re going to look at in the season for Jason, that could be the ultimate end for him, on the battlefield.
How does Jason feel about the Bravo situation now? You also have Drew (Beau Knapp) coming in and Drew saying, “I’m not here to make friends,” but Bravo is such a family.
Yeah, yeah, Jason knows. Like, “I saw this.” I think Jason knows more than Drew is letting on or what he’s hiding. Jason has peeked in that door. He knows because A, he’s been there, [and] B, he’s dealt with it and continues to deal with the trauma. You can try to deal with it, heal some of the trauma, but the process is always going to be there but you just process it in a different way. That’s what Jason does. So he can read Drew pretty quickly. Like this guy comes up and he’s like, “I don’t want anything to do with [them],” and Jason’s like, “Dude, I’ve seen this before. I’m a few steps ahead of you. When that moment comes, that weakness, I’ll be able to tell you where I was at that moment, how it’ll help you.” And that’s family.
So it can be uncomfortable from the outside and while it’s in there, it’s still family. So he’s dealing with it the way he’s dealing with his own trauma, the way he’s dealing with the first murder and how it haunts him and how he might eventually have to go back to Afghanistan to deal with that. That’s part of the season. And in saying that, what we see up front is the team is on the sidelines, but then these crazy things happen in Sweden at this mall. There’s blood, and Jason’s like, “I couldn’t handle this and now it’s bringing me back and I don’t want to go back and fight this demon, and oh, let me escape to my daughter. Let’s go to the beach. This is how it’s supposed to be.” And then something happens to them and he’s like, “If I wasn’t here, this wouldn’t have happened.” So he starts blaming himself.
He could have lost his son this season in an episode that I directed, which was heartbreaking and emotional, and even at the end of that episode, he’s like, I just ruined everything here, which I think is the right thing to do.
