DAVID BOREANAZ
ON HIS LOVE FOR THE PHILADELPHIA 76ERS AND THE NAVY SEALS, THE POSSIBILI OF A BONES REUNION AND HOW HIS DOG JUMP-STARTED HIS CAREER
David Boreanaz has always loved basketball, beginning with his obsession with the Philadelphia 76ers when he moved from Buffalo, N.Y., to Philly at the age of 8. That’s when they became his hometown team and he became their No. 1 fan. His fondest memory: “Watching them win the championship in ’83 and sweep the Lakers!”
Now living thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, where he stars as Jason Hayes on TV’s hit CBS series SEAL
Team, Boreanaz, 50, still has a soft spot for his iconic NBA hometown team.
“I went to their last playoff game back home this year,” he says, adding that he’s always in the stands in L.A. sporting 76ers paraphernalia when his team is in town.
Boreanaz admires a lot about the sport, but particularly the teamwork and the effort the athletes put into each season. “It’s a tough game,” he says. Boreanaz, who’s nothing if not a hard worker, can relate. He wasn’t an instant success in Hollywood but continued to hone his craft throughout the years on his journey to becoming a television mainstay. And he couldn’t have done it, he says, without a whole team of people helping him.
ACTING BUG
Boreanaz fell in love with acting doing grade-school plays, which he credits for coaxing him out of his shell. “When I moved to Philadelphia, I got pushed around a lot and had to try to find my way. It was a different environment than Buffalo,” he says. But the first time he got onstage in front of his classmates, he discovered his destiny.
Later, at Ithaca College, he graduated with a cinema and photography degree. “I wrote a thesis comparing and contrasting Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal against Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves,” he says, recalling his final project, for which he also made a film that centered around a doorknob.
After graduating in 1991, he moved to Los Angeles and crashed on the couch in his sister’s loft while passing out résumés around Hollywood. He put on a suit, pretended he was a studio head and sneaked onto movie lots. While that stunt didn’t earn him any acting roles, it did come with a few perks, like getting him onto the set of Cheers. “I looked like an extra, so I blended in and got lunch that day for free,” he says with a laugh.
Though landing his first break took time, Boreanaz never wavered. He did local theater, took improvisational acting classes and slowly began landing commercial jobs. Then, while walking his dog, he was discovered by talent manager Tom Parziale, who got him an audition, which turned into a guest spot on a 1993 episode of
his manager today. “I owe a lot to Bertha Blue, my dog at the time,” Boreanaz says. The experience cemented his lifelong love of canine companions. He currently has several rescues: Shelby, Gucci, Roxy and his French bulldog, Louis V, who has his own Instagram, @louisvthelegend.
In 1997, he landed the role of Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He portrayed the character until the series wrapped in 2003. “It was a really exciting time. Things happened very fast, and it was just a blast,” he says of working alongside co-stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan. Boreanaz also played the lead role in the
Buffy spinoff, Angel, from 1999 to 2004. But it was Bones, in 2005, that really put him on the map. Co-starring as FBI special agent Seeley Booth alongside Emily Deschanel, who played Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, they portrayed a team of forensic investigators in the hit comedic crime drama, which found a loyal fan following and ran for 12 seasons on Fox. While each episode often featured an array of forensic and anthropological facts, Boreanaz jokes that those details were—thankfully—his co-star’s department. “[Deschanel] could probably name all the bones. I still can’t,” he says.
Bones catapulted Boreanaz into mainstream media, making him many females’ “man crush,” a notion he laughingly dismisses. “Bones was like these small I Love
Lucy skits in the forensic anthropology world. It was such a fun show to be a part of,” he says. In spite of its being only a few years since the series finale, fans have already been asking if a new iteration will happen. Not likely, he says. “I’m not much of a reunion guy. I work in the now. Emily would laugh if she were here, ’cause [she knows] that’s the way I am.”
HIS PROUDEST ROLE
Boreanaz’s focus for the past two years has been on SEAL Team, which follows the high-stakes lives of elite Navy SEALS and brings the role of his character, Jason Hayes, to life. Hayes, a fictional character, is a “Tier 1,” the highest classification a SEAL operative can receive—and he’s come to represent something special to the actor who plays him and viewers who watch him. “He is really important to me, and playing him, I feel more in tune than I’ve ever been with a character,” he says.
Boreanaz also serves as an executive producer on the series and has directed two episodes. “It’s intense,” he says of working to make the portrayal accurate. “We’ve gotten very positive feedback from veterans, Tier 1 operators and armed forces people thanking us,” he says, adding that his goal for the series is to “shine light on these guys who suffer in what they do for a living and how they protect us.” And in every episode, he pays homage to the real-life SEAL—an actual Tier 1 operator who went out on 13 deployments, including the mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden—who brought the idea for the show to the network. “I wear his helmet. I could wear a lighter [prop] helmet, but I decided to wear his actual helmet to honor him, and I will do that throughout the run of the whole series.”
Getting into SEAL mode and doing 90 percent of his own stunts, like kicking in doors, requires Boreanaz to be in the best shape of his life. “It’s intense physically on the body,” he says. He works out at least four times a week, boxing
and focusing on speed work, stretching and core strengthening. He eats a high-protein, low-sugar diet, making the occasional exception for a slice of pizza.
SEAL Team returned for its new season Oct. 2. “It’s so crazy!” he says, explaining that the new episodes really “push the boundaries. The first four, especially, are really emotional.” He admits that after a long day on set, he often unwinds with a cold beer. Some days require a shot of tequila.
“I love to work,” he says. “If I idle too long, I get anxious and need to move.” And so, in his world, time off can be a rarity. Weekends typically find him combing through scripts to perfect his dialogue with Ivana Chubbuck, his acting coach of 20 years. But he spends any downtime with his wife of 18 years, Jaime Bergman, and their children, Jaden, 17, and Bella, 10. He cheers on Bella in her equestrian pursuits, even hopping on a horse for a season two episode of SEAL Team. “She laughed at me because I wasn’t doing it right!” he says.
distracted with browsing for “French bulldogs, hockey, vintage cars and old watches.”
Though he’s been a Hollywood name for decades, he reveals, “I never feel like I made it.” But he admits he’s come a long way since his childhood days of trying to emulate the court moves of his basketball favorites like Julius Erving and Bobby Jones, guys who work hard, sweat and play as a team. He can relate to all of that as an actor, coming to Hollywood, remembering all the people who helped him and encouraged him farther up the ladder.
“Sports in general is a team game, and I learned a lot about what it takes to win as a team,” he says. “It’s not just individual play. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. [Everybody] has a job to do.
“I just work hard. I love, after a long run or something, how the body feels exhausted and mentally [spent]; it feels like a sense of accomplishment. I remember when I was a kid, I would cut the grass and it took all day, and then I’d look back and see how perfect the lines were in the grass. And I’d say, ‘You know what? That was hard work. I’m a hard-work guy.’ That, to me, is accomplishment in itself.”