‘Bones’: Emily Deschanel Says Rewatch Podcast Gives Her ‘New Appreciation for the Show’

[This interview was conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike authorization.]

It’s time to rediscover your love for Bones (if you ever lost it), and what better way to do that than with the stars?

Emily Deschanel (who played Dr. Temperance Brennan) and Carla Gallo (who recurred as Daisy Wick) have reunited for a rewatch podcast, to go through the episodes, share behind-the-scenes stories, and interview key cast and crew members. The launch of Boneheads with Emily Deschanel and Carla Gallo (A Bones Rewatch Podcast) has been delayed due to the actors strike. But while you wait, below, Deschanel talks about diving back into the world of Bones.

Talk about starting this podcast with Carla and your goal in doing so.

Emily Deschanel: Everyone’s doing rewatch podcasts these days, so that was kind of in the zeitgeist. Carla and I have been friends almost from when she started on the show. I’m friends with everybody on the cast, I keep in touch with everyone, but she and I are especially close because also two of our best friends are best friends as well. As we say in the pilot, our best friends are best friends, so we all hang out a good amount. And Carla’s just so fun and funny and witty and clever and smart and we get along great and we both love talking. We’re just chit-chatters. So it was a natural choice to work with Carla.

I loved the idea of her being an insider but also an outsider. She didn’t come in until almost Season 4, so she hasn’t watched all these episodes before and wasn’t on set until later on. So she can kind of be an outsider saying, “What were you doing? What were you thinking? Why were you doing this?”

In terms of why we’re doing a rewatch podcast, it just made a lot of sense. Everyone I knew was doing a podcast or a rewatch podcast. Bones was such a huge part of my life and, obviously my career. I started it when I was 28, and I finished at 40 and I was married with two kids, so my whole life changed while I was doing Bones. You can’t have perspective while you’re doing it. And when I finished doing the show, I kind of felt like I was coming up for air. I was under a rock for 12 years, and I kind of was able to live in the real world again a bit. I even took a couple years off right after. I’d taken time off in between as well. And it helps me have perspective on the show and what it was. I just think it’s a great opportunity to look back, selfishly to look back and say, “What did we do? What did we do all those years?” I couldn’t have perspective because I was just in it.

And then also for fans. Carla and I remark so many people that we encounter in our lives who are fans of the show, who come up to us, say they’ve rewatched the show multiple times. I think that Bones is just a really great show to have a rewatch podcast for because so many people watch it multiple times over, and you get new things. Having done several episodes now, I get something different every time I watch an episode, so I understand why fans rewatch it over and over again. I’d never really done that before until the podcast. Sometimes you need to rewatch it because you miss certain things. It’s so plot-heavy, you miss certain things, and so it’s helpful to watch them again.

Patrick McElhenney/FOX/courtesy Everett Collection

What can listeners expect with each episode?

Each episode will either dive into an episode of the show — we’re going linearly from the beginning of the show from the first episode on. We will discuss the episode, what happens in the episode, and memories that we have of behind-the-scenes. It almost always sparks some kind of tangent that we go on. Carla and I just can talk for hours, and so almost always there’s some kind of tangent or multiple tangents that we go on discussing an idea that’s sparked by a theme on the show or something that just comes up in our conversation. We’ll have thoughts, criticisms, and laugh about things that happened on the show — mostly laughing; there’s lots of laughing about things that we did on the show.

And then we also will have episodes where we interview people who are involved in the show. So we’ve talked so far already to TJ Thyne, Eric Milligan, Hart Hanson, who created the show. Barry Josephson who’s an executive producer, put all the elements together, and talked to Greg Yaitanes who directed the pilot and two other episodes… We’ll be talking to a lot of other people as well who worked on the show. I’m in talks with David Boreanaz to hopefully be on, but we haven’t nailed him down yet so I don’t want to say he’s a guest until we get him on. Kathy Reichs, who wrote the books, that’s based on. Tamara Taylor who comes in the second season.

So it’ll either be an episode where we are rewatching the show and discussing the show and going on tangents and laughing about it, or it’ll be an interview where we’re getting behind-the-scenes scoops from people who worked on the show.

Are you going to do every single episode of the show, or are you skipping some?

No, we’re planning to do every episode, for good or bad. [Laughs]

Can you share anything about any plans you have if you do have David as a guest?

Oh, there will be talks about pranks, there will be reminiscing about meeting each other and stories. We pulled some pranks. There were some whoopee cushions, and at a certain point, we had remote control fart machines on the show. This is not very sophisticated, but this did happen. We will talk about his socks. Everything’s on the table. I don’t know, but we will have a lot of fun.

Have you found a different appreciation for any episodes, or are you looking at any differently as a result of doing this podcast? Not that you didn’t enjoy the episode the first time around, but maybe you’re noticing something that you didn’t?

I’ve had a new appreciation for the Christmas episode in the first season, it’s an episode that Hart Hanson, who’s the creator of the show and showrunner, said was a favorite, if not the favorite episode of his. It also was the episode that convinced him that the show was solid and really worked and could have longevity. It’s called “The Man in the Fallout Shelter.” A lot of things were revealed in it. It’s also an episode where we all get stuck in the lab together, so it takes place in one place; the whole thing is what they call a bottle episode. We never left that location. I kind of forgot about that episode, and I really have a new appreciation for it again. So yeah, that was one that stood out.

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How do you remember Bones and the character of Brennan today? And is that changing as you’re doing this rewatch?

It is a bit. What I love is that I can watch it, and before when I’d watch an episode, it would be just so hard to watch, and I’d be so critical. And now I just have an affection for the show and for myself at the time. So I guess it’s more my perspective that I immediately experience. I just have a new appreciation for the show. I have a real affection for it. Obviously, it took up a lot of my life, so I hope I enjoy watching them, but I really have. I’ve enjoyed watching them more than I did before, so it’s kind of been a little bit of self-growth for myself to look at it.

But I also am seeing some difficult episodes that have some things that I don’t love in them. When episodes would deal with terrorism in a way and in a way that, looking back, I don’t love, and I’m not sure how I felt about at the time. It might have been uncomfortable. So we’re looking back in every way, with affection and also a bit of criticism. I think as a show as a whole, I don’t have a full perspective on it yet because we’ve just started rewatching them, but I would say, in general, I just have more of an affection for the show and I appreciate it even more now.

I know Bones has such an amazing fan base, and they’re going to love this podcast.

I hope so. I know; we do have great, amazing fans. We have such dedicated and incredible fans. Selfishly we do it to see what we did, but also, most importantly, we’re giving back to the fans who have been so loyal and so dedicated to the show and just loved it, and we want to give them more.