Why David Boreanaz Ignored All The FBI Prep Advice He Received For Bones

On the hit TV series "Bones," FBI Agent Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz, is presented as a down-to-earth, kind of blue-collar law enforcement officer. He is the pragmatist and the realist of the show's central pair, giving the ultra-cerebral "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) someone to bounce ideas off of. She approaches a murder victim with curiosity, while Booth explains things out loud in more humane terms. Dramatically, he serves as a translator of Bones' medical jargon. Before working for the FBI, Booth was an Army Ranger, where he worked as a sniper.

The dynamic between Bones and Booth was enough to carry "Bones" through 246 episodes throughout its 12 seasons. The show was reminiscent of numerous other hit police procedurals ("NCIS" and the like), but with a whimsical horror/comedy bent, largely thanks to its extreme gore and kooky explanations for the murders at hand. The central dynamic also reminded some viewers of "The X-Files," in that it involved a pair of crime-fighters, with one being a skeptic and one being a believer. There were no alien subplots on "Bones" like on "The X-Files," however. 

The "blue collar" aspects of Booth deeply informed Boreanaz's performance. The actor, knowing he was playing an FBI agent, did his homework, visiting FBI offices and asking the usual way that the agency's employees comport themselves. He learned all about the nature of the job and the personality traits that the FBI all share. He then proceeded to ignore all the FBI's advice and play Booth in his own idiom. The actor figured that Booth's past as a military sniper was more significant to the character than his Bureau training. 

Boreanaz talked about his approach to Booth in a 2008 interview with Tube Talk. It was conducted when the show was still in its third season, so Booth was, relatively speaking, still at an early stage of his development. 

Boreanaz was candid about his FBI research saying that: 

"Everything that they told me about the FBI I threw out the door in a lot of ways. I respected it. I went through the idea of it. I took the approach of the military aspect of the guy working for the FBI rather than a guy who came right out of Harvard and he's a penny-loafer and pencil-pusher guy who gets kicked around, and who is afraid to get his feet wet. For me, it was more interesting from that angle with the military guy who was a blue-collar guy. And from there, everything exploded."

It seems that FBI agents were described to Boreanaz, essentially, as well-educated nerds and red-tape-loving office wonks who do more research and paperwork than actual crimefighting. Boreanaz clearly wanted Booth to be more of a relatable everyman, a pragmatist who exists among people who are better-educated than him. This tracks, given that Bones herself was meant to be the intellect of the show's leading pair, while Booth was meant to be more of its id. Then, secondarily, he began paying attention to the nitty-gritty of law enforcement details. When it came to gun training, he finally started paying attention again. Boreanaz continued: 

"When it comes to using any kind of firearms or entries into buildings, I don't mess around with [it]. I do it as cleanly and as professionally as I can, the way they would do it. I work with a great guy, Mike Grasso on the show, who is with the LAPD who is fantastic so for me. [The gunplay] is very, very authentic to a T, but there is stuff, character stuff, that I like to bring." 

The approach, as mentioned, worked well enough to sustain the character for 12 seasons. Boreanaz then brought his military gruffness to the series "SEAL Team," and tapped into similar acting resources for another seven seasons. Boreanaz and military thinking have made the actor very rich.