The long-running “Bones” procedural starred Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz for 12 seasons. The actors played two very contrasting characters — and their approaches to their dialogue on one of the best police procedurals were just as different. “[Boreanaz] played a character when we were working together that very much didn’t have to say the words verbatim,” Deschanel told David Duchovny on his “Fail Better” podcast. “My character spoke in a very specific way, and I had to say them exactly as written.”
For Deschanel, it was about leading the show as forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan with total accuracy, even if she’s hesitant to return in a possible “Bones” reunion. “I was speaking science. Most of my career has been playing the scientist. I have to get my mouth around the words,” she explained.
Deschanel studied acting in a conservatory program at Boston University, where a major precedent was put on preserving a work’s lines as written. This technique was employed while performing classics like Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Anton Chekhov, but no matter the writer, the text itself was crucial to the performer’s work in shaping characters. “I would not ever ask to change — especially playing Brennan,” Deschanel said. “The lines were as written.”
David Boreanaz’s relaxed approach felt right for Seeley Booth
On the flip side, Emily Deschanel’s costar David Boreanaz approached his dialogue in a more relaxed way because his character, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, didn’t have the same intense science background Brenner had. Booth’s reliance on his partner’s knowledge allowed Boreanaz to paraphrase his dialogue in a way that felt natural and lived in — similarly to how Deschanel’s regimented text felt right for her character.
Because he was able to ad-lib a bit, Boreanaz had an ability to be prepared on the fly that Deschanel simply could never achieve within the circumstances of her strict scientific dialogue. “He could just look [at the script] and then do the scene. He spent time looking at it too. I don’t mean to minimize,” she explained on David Duchovny’s “Fail Better” podcast. “But I think in a pinch, he could do that where you’d look at it and be able to do the scene. I can’t imagine.”
