Tune in for an all-new episode of ‘Blue Bloods’ this Friday, May 1st at 10:00 PM ET/PT, only on CBS and streaming on CBS All Access.
CBS Local’s Matt Weiss spoke to series star Donnie Wahlberg (Danny Reagan) about keeping busy in quarantine and what it means to provide viewers an escape during these trying times.
MW: Hey there Donnie, hope all’s going well for you during quarantine, super excited to talk to you today. Have you been doing anything special to keep busy during this time?
DW: You know, the first few days I was dealing with one business catastrophe after another. My family’s in the restaurant business and we’re shutting down restaurants left and right and dealing with a lot of fallout from that. It’s kind of weighing on me a little bit and I just kind of went on Instagram Live and clicked on Club Quarantine with D-Nice one afternoon and the music just made me feel a lot better and reminded me of who I am.
I‘m not a person who gets stressed out or gets down. I always put other people before myself. That little musical experience kind of reminded me to get back to who I am. I immediately wrote a song, called “House Party” which I recorded with New Kids On The Block, Boyz 2 Men and Naughty By Nature and Big Freedia, Jordin Sparks. The song’s raised almost a quarter million dollars for charity.
Jenny and I’ve been doing a lot of fun videos just to keep people smiling and laughing. Doing our part in this time to help other people in any way we can. I mean we’re entertainers, so we’re just trying to entertain and do it in a way that’s helpful to others.
MW: Music alone is such a great way to lift people’s spirits but the charity aspect adds a whole other dimension to it, really cool.
DW: Thank you. I couldn’t believe we actually pulled this all off, working with all these other artists. We had to ship microphones around the country, but I made a point when I wrote the song to reach out to friends. I didn’t want a big celebrity song full of people that I don’t even know just because they’re famous. It’s people that we have relationships with; people we have a connection with. My brother’s in the video. It really is something that was from the heart and people who we have a connection with want to be part of it. I’m grateful to them for doing it.
MW: Outside of music you also have an episode of Blue Bloods coming this week. I’m curious though, this is the season finale, was that the plan or was that altered because of everything?
DW: It was not the plan.
