Actor David Boreanaz, 55, is having mixed emotions. He’s ready for a break from the physical demands of playing an elite Navy SEAL in an action-packed TV series, but he admits that he gets restless between projects. “I can be on a show and be blessed and fortunate to do something and then have a little bit of a break.
And then, two weeks in, I don’t idle very well, and I have to be back on the set,” he says. The seventh and final season of Paramount+’s SEAL Team premieres August 11, and Boreanaz shares with AARP how he gained his strong work ethic, his interest in plant-based medicine, and why he never got invited back to cook with Martha Stewart.
You were committed to doing almost all your own stunts while filming SEAL Team, correct? How difficult was that?
I did, and it was tough. The show was prescribed in a way that we’re going to do this real. It’s going to be honest. We’re doing it with real SEALs. We’re not going to sugarcoat it — so that was embedded in me. And being a Taurus, and the type of dedication I have to the process, it becomes an even more real thing.
I would get upset over guys not having dirt on their faces [because] we have to be dirty. It has to be authentic. I took it to such the degree that my body was like: OK, you’re now finishing up. You’re going to have four MRIs in the next two months — which I just went through. So what part of the body doesn’t hurt?
Are you feeling your age?
[I’m] not really thinking about it. I have such a youthful outlook on my perception of things. But the body says, “Well, you can’t do those types of things anymore.” You wake up with a little bit more pain in the legs and the knees, the shoulders. The show really kind of beat me up that way.
Boreanaz plays Jason Hayes on Paramount+'s "SEAL Team." The seventh and final season of the series begins August 11.
Have you stayed in touch with your colleagues from SEAL Team and the other series you’ve worked on?
I talk to Parisa [Fakhri from SEAL Team] here and there. I talk to Sarah [Michelle Gellar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]; Emily [Deschanel from Bones]; Julie Benz [from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. [They are] people that you work with have affected you somewhat and have always been there for you in the work and the personal aspects of your lives. All the guys that I’ve worked with on [SEAL Team], I speak to them as much as I can. There’s an interesting part of me — I don’t like reunions, I never have. I live very presently in the now, and I don’t look down the line too much. I’ve effectively been like that for a very strong part of the last two years of my life.
Did something happen in the last two years that made you live more in the present?
Yeah, I had done some plant medicine for the first time, and I was enamored by it. I was curious from working on a show that was about special operators and the certain things that could help them with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] or TBI [traumatic brain injury], and studying the subject matter so intently and deeply that I became very interested in trying ayahuasca [a plant-based psychedelic drug].
I did that, and it was a very profound experience for me, and something that really opens up your heart chakra. You’re able to really understand your traumas and heal yourself by forgiving yourself. That was a big, big thing that happened to me. I honor that, and I live in that energy more so than I think I ever have.
