‘Boston Blue’ Showrunners Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis Preview ‘Blue Bloods’ Expansion and Danny’s New Partnership (Exclusive)

The Blue Bloods Universe is expanding, and creators and showrunners Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis spoke to PopCulture.com all about Boston Blue.

In the new series, premiering on Friday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, Donnie Wahlberg’s Danny Reagan takes a new job with the Boston PD as he tries to reconnect with his son, Sean.

His new partner, Lena, is the eldest daughter in a prominent law enforcement family that consists of a Baptist pastor, DA, police superintendent, and rookie cop. Along with Wahlberg, Boston Blue stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Mika Amonsen, Ernie Hudson, Gloria Reuben, Maggie Lawson, and Marcus Scribner. Just like Blue Bloods, Sonnier said that Boston Blue has a lot of “amazing cop work, but also, more importantly, family drama.”

“We like to call the show a family drama wrapped in a police procedural,” he continued. “And so whereas we get all of the fun of Danny and Lena (Martin-Green) and their partnership and the great cases that they will tackle and Sean (Amonsen) and Jonah (Scribner) and their rookie partnership and learning how to be cops together while walking the patrol beat. Mae (Reuben) in the DA’s office tackling the biggest cases in the city, while Sarah (Lawson) has to deal with police procedural issues and also being one of the top cops in Boston PD, we get a piece of family drama. We get to follow what’s happening in these characters’ lives from episode to episode, in their personal lives, in their relationships with each other around their dinner table.”

As for how the two shows are different from each other, Margolis stated the obvious, noting the different cities. “Boston and New York have their unique identities, and we get to have fun with Donnie Wahlberg, who’s the ultimate Boston citizen playing Danny Reagan, a New Yorker, as a fish out of water,” he said. “So, the culture clash is certainly gonna be fun. And also, it’s a new dinner table to pull up a seat to every week. The Silvers have their traditions, but are very familiar to the comfort of the Blue Bloods Reagan family dinner. But we get to see their lives every week, and Danny and Sean get to be a participant in that as well.”

“I’ll start with what’s similar and then segue into what’s different because I think that it’ll be illuminating,” Sonnier added. “We have a family at the center of this show that has a strong sense of duty, a strong moral compass, an extreme belief in their faith, but most importantly, in their family. And from there, we evolved into that family at the core of the show being more diverse, interracial, interfaith family with a matriarch instead of a patriarch that really can tackle all of those same issues, can have all of those same beliefs and all of those same feelings, but coming from very different points of view, coming from very different lived experiences, which will make for a broader conversation.”

Speaking of differences, Danny will be riding with a new partner, Detective Lena Silver, played by Martin-Green. Margolis shared that the two are “kind of mirror images of each other, but they’re not opposites. I think, traditionally, you’ll see in a lot of cop shows two partners that don’t really get along but find a way to meet in the middle. They’re oil and water. They’re cynical or they’re skeptics. But for us, what’s fun about the partnership is that they truly see each other in each other,” also noting that their family situations are pretty similar.

Even though fans are used to seeing Danny with Marisa Ramirez’s Maria Baez, it should be entertaining to see how things work out with Danny and Lena, especially with similar backgrounds when it comes to policing. Then there’s everyone else and Boston Blue in general. There may no longer be Reagan family dinners, but it sounds like there will be another dinner that fans can sit down. Boston Blue will be a series fans won’t want to miss, and it all starts on Friday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.