Wednesday night, NASCAR driver Austin Dillon will be featured during an episode of SEAL Team on CBS. While he won’t be neutralizing enemies, the racing veteran will be helping the elite operators blow off some steam at the Auto Club Speedway. With the episode set to air tonight, actor Judd Lormand explained how this crossover came to be during an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com.
According to the man that portrays Lt. Commander Eric Blackburn, Dillon’s guest appearance has actually been in the works for a considerable amount of time. This was not a simple matter of making a few phone calls in the days prior to filming. Instead, Lormand and one of the producers discussed the matter a year ago.
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“To my knowledge, about a year ago, myself and one of our producers went out to the Fontana race in early 2019, I guess February or so of 2019, and that was my first introduction to Austin and his team,” Lormand told PopCulture.com. “They were a great group — and it’s funny, because I said, I told one of our producers, Spencer [Hudnut], ‘We need to do something. We need to get him on the show.’ And he goes, ‘Already working on it.’”
As Lormand explains, both he and Hudnut are big fans of Dillon as well as stock car racing, so they felt a guest appearance would be perfect. CBS agreed and worked with NASCAR to make Wednesday’s episode come to life.
Dillon’s appearance on the show took some time to make happen, but everything eventually lined up during the third season of SEAL Team. As Lormand said during his interview, “it was awesome.”
Adding a new figure to the circle of actors is not a simple matter, but Lormand and the rest of the SEAL Team cast were very impressed with Dillon and his acting skills. They only had to give him minor input while filming at the Auto Club Speedway.
“Austin was a natural at it. So there wasn’t a lot of tips needed,” Lormand said. “I mean, we were just kind of there to let him know that it’s okay to relax, ‘It’s okay to be yourself, it’s okay to play around with it a little bit.’ Does that make sense? And make it yours, that type of thing. But once we said that early on, man, he caught that right away, and that was it. Like I say, he was a natural.”
The newest episode of SEAL Team airs Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.
Photo Credit: Getty/Christian Petersen (Dillon); Getty Images/Paul Archuleta (Lormand)
