Emily Deschanel isn’t Team Angel or Team Spike because she’s never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer — despite all the years she spent on Bones with David Boreanaz.
“It’s just one of those things that I never watched Buffy. I know people were obsessed with it and loved it so much,” Deschanel, 48, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, March 18, while promoting her and Carla Gallo’s “Boneheads” podcast. “There are classes in colleges about that show and all that. That genre is not something that I generally gravitate towards for whatever reason.”
Deschanel wasn’t well-versed in vampire slayer Buffy’s (Sarah Michelle Gellar) love live, which included relationships with vampires Angel (Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters), but she said that benefited her when playing Boreanaz’s opposite on Bones.
“That was actually helpful when I auditioned for Bones that I wasn’t, you know, starstruck or intimidated by David in that way,” she recalled. “I mean, there’s a little intimidation because I knew who he was. I knew those shows. It wasn’t like I was living under a rock, but I wasn’t starstruck.”
Deschanel noted that not watching Buffy before auditioning for Bones “helped me get the job” and later “hold my own with David.”
She remembered that Boreanaz, 55, “had a lot more experience” than she did at the start of the series, since Deschanel had never “done a TV series” up until that point.
“I wasn’t, like, a drooling fan of his either. I think that was helpful,” Deschanel said with a laugh. “But I know I should watch it now. Eventually I’ll get to it.”
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Boreanaz played the dreamy Angel on Buffy from 1997 to 2003. The hit series sparked his own spinoff, Angel, which ran from 1999 to 2004. One year after Angel wrapped, Boreanaz began portraying FBI special agent Seeley Booth on Bones alongside Deschanel, who played anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan.
Throughout the series, which lasted 12 seasons from 2005 to 2017, Booth enlisted Brennan’s help and the great minds in her lab to help solve cases where the victims’ bones were all that was left. As the cases intensified, so did Booth and Brennan’s onscreen romance, which Deschanel told Us was easy to play.
“Certain levels of the chemistry were instant. We gelled when I came in and read the scene with him and auditioned,” the actress recalled. “We kind of brought things out of each other and then, you know, we became much closer doing the show.”
Deschanel joked that the costars also drove each other “crazy” from time to time but that was evidence of their friendship. When it comes to her favorite memories with Boreanaz, Deschanel pointed to her off-screen pregnancies. (Deschanel shares sons Henry, 13, and Calvin, 9, with husband David Hornsby.)
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“David became so protective of me when I was pregnant twice,” she remembered. “One time, I was early pregnant, and I almost fell down a flight of stairs. He ran towards me and the look on his face was so terrified. He was just so protective of me in those ways.”
Deschanel’s former Bones castmate Gallo, who is her “Boneheads” podcast cohost, had an equally memorable time with her TV love interest. Gallo, 49, played Daisy Wick, who fell in love with Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley), and eventually had his child.
Gallo recalled meeting Daley, 39, when he was on Freaks and Geeks and she was part of the Undeclared cast — years prior to their work on Bones.
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“He might’ve been, like, 17 or something. I remember him kind of being a little flirty with me, but I was like 26,” she recalled to Us. “I was like, this kid, ‘He’s so cute, but he’s a child and like, why is he trying to [flirt]?’”
When they reconnected during season 4 of Bones, Gallo confessed it was a “real reversal” because he was now a “full-fledged man” and she had “a little crush on him.”
“I was like, ‘He is the sweetest person,’ but I had missed the window,” she said with a laugh. “He was like, ‘Listen, old lady, you’re in your 30s now. You passed the prime. You missed the opportunity.’”
Even though they were never romantic outside of the show, Gallo told Us she can’t wait to have Daley on her and Deschanel’s “Boneheads” podcast.
The podcast is hosted by Deschanel and Gallo, who talk about all-things Bones, with special guests from the series as well as crew and creative members from the show’s past.
“Carla and I just love to chat. We became friends [after] meeting on Bones, and we can’t stop talking to each other,” Deschanel told Us about how “Boneheads” came to be. “We just love chitchatting, and people are doing these rewatch podcasts and we [liked] the idea of an excuse to have to chat with each other, weekly.”
The “Boneheads” podcast is produced by Lemonada Media with new episodes released every Wednesday.
