Barook here in New York, coming to you from the set of Blue Bloods. Now, check out what happened when I sat down with stars Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes. Donnie, we're sitting here right in the middle of your set for Blue Bloods. You play a detective. What surprised you most when you're researching this role to learn about real life, New York City detective?

Um, well, I think the thing that may have surprised me most is that the detectives I work with in the show, the the consultants and technical adviser Jim Nuso, they all said that I would have made a great detective.

Why is that?

I'll do certain things in a scene, he he'll always say, how did you know how to do that? How did you know how to do that? Simple things like walking up the street, you know, approaching a van and you know, I I'll walk in the middle, not on either side of the van, but right up the middle behind it, and he said, why did you walk up the middle behind the van? I said, well, because I didn't want the guy to see me in one of his rearview mirrors. And he was like, that's what you would be trained to do. I said, oh, all right. Well, what do you know? Therefore I'd be a great cop.

What role does the city of New York play in Blue Bloods?

Yeah, what's interesting that you say that. I know early on, um, the powers that be fought fought hard to get the show shot here in New York. There's no better place in the world to shoot an NYPPD show than than uh, than here in New York City. And um, I think that usually we're able to utilize the city in in fantastic form where, you know, we're here on the on the steps today and we shoot out in Brooklyn and we get all over.

So the city really is your co-star.

Absolutely. It's it's it's a character in the show. I I don't think it the show would be the same shot somewhere else. I'm shooting in the streets in New York, it's I mean there's just so many people passing by and they're curious and they're, you know, they're looking and I don't like hide from it. I like embrace it. I'll talk to people and take pictures and um, I love the thrill of of just working.

What is your most proud episode of Blue Bloods?

Gosh, there's there's so many that come to mind. Um, the episode that dealt with uh 9/11, I thought was um, a particularly good piece of television that we got to do.

I was observing before on set something I've never seen before. A fan came up and literally stuck their cell phone to your ear for you to say hi to the other person.

I would have talked more, but uh, he smelled like he was smoking something right before he handed me the phone.

Oh no.

Yeah, and I I don't know if that's what got him to do it. Yeah, yeah, I can't I can't yeah. I got to uh Not so much. Well, I didn't want to catch a contact, you know, I got to focus and uh I say no to drugs. I say no to drugs.

Eye on the prize. What's the craziest thing a fan has ever done, aside from Mr. Cellphone Guy? I mean if Most outrageous.

Yeah, I think um, I don't know, probably climbing on top of a tour bus and, you know, driving, you know, we're driving through uh

While you're in it.

Santiago, Chile. Yeah, we're in the bus and we heard banging on the roof.

No.

There were fans up on the roof, yeah.

You of course grew up though in Los Angeles. You're an LA guy. Did Does that mean you caught the acting bug really early?

It caught me. Yeah. Um, I sort of fell into it, you know, sort of an opportunity of geography, I think, when I was pretty young and uh, it's um, it's been it's been great.

You were actually a star in a Bon Jovi music video.

I was. Yeah, yeah. We met on a movie called U-571 and he said, do you want to be in my video? And I said, yeah, I want to be in your video. And who would say no to that, right? And it was a lot of fun too. Yeah.

You're about to embark on a pretty major tour with New Kids on the Block, the package.

Mhm. What can we expect? This is a really unique concept with these three groups going together. It's going to be um, it's going to be a lot of fun. I think um, first and foremost, you know, we're going to have a lot of great songs to play for the audience and that's really important. I mean, we since we've gotten back together in in 2008, the new kids, um, we really take a lot of pride in our live shows and we really take a lot of pride in, you know, creating a really special experience for our fans. And I think, you know, combining these three groups and and having all these hit records and all these, you know, great singers on stage in one night, I think it's going to make for a very, very entertaining night and that's that's what's most important, you know, it's not really about our egos at the end of the night. It's about the fans' happiness and um, our concerts seem to be they they sort of create a very special energy. It's hard to describe it, but it's it's actually a lot more fun touring now than it was, you know, 25 years ago.