If you watch Blue Bloods even occasionally, you must be familiar with the Reagan family dinners. They have been a regular feature of Blue Bloods episodes from the show’s inception, and turned out to be a very popular part of it. They allow the family to both have discussions about their current cases and to strengthen their mutual bonds. And the fans of the show probably aren’t going to be surprised by the fact that the food used for those dinners is always real.
Indeed, using real food is much cheaper and simpler than any conceivable alternative, although not all actors actually eat during the dinner scenes. After all, these scenes are long, and, like most scenes, regularly have to be re-shot, so at times it is more expedient to just push food around on your plate, if you don’t want to overeat or even get sick.So, while there are actors among the main cast who do enjoy the food, others are just really convincing at, well, acting like they do.
As Jim Lillis, property manager for Blue Bloods told in an interview, “Some are good at faking it. They are very good at making it look like they’re really enjoying a hearty dinner.” There is one definitely fake thing on the table during each family dinner, though. As you might have guessed, it is wine and other alcohol. For some time it was known that contents of actors’ cups are not actually alcoholic beverages they are supposed to be on the screen.And recently Donny Wahlberg (who plays Danny Reagan) revealed what’s used instead of alcohol in those scenes, when interviewed by People magazine:
“Someone asked me if we get drunk because we have a lot of wine during the dinner scene, but, sadly, it’s just grape juice. Sorry, guys. And ‘Scotch’ is iced tea. I think they give us decaffeinated or we’d be bouncing off the walls.”
This is not surprising – otherwise, and particularly given the above-mentioned re-shoots, most of the cast would have risked getting far too inebriated to recite their lines!